How to Draw With Conte Crayons

Conte crayons are crayons for grown-ups. The genuine article is made of graphite and clay in red, brown and black. Fortunately, there are imitations in even more colors. The following steps will help you draw with Conte crayons.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Conte crayons
• Drawing paper with tooth (roughness)
• Blending stumps and tortillions
• Small knife
• Paper towels

1. Buy the best set you can find. This probably means the most expensive set, but it doesn't necessarily mean you have to buy the biggest set. Start with just a few crayons until you are sure you want to continue using them.

2. Break the crayons. Unless you're working on a very large drawing, the entire crayon is too big to work with for most people. By breaking it, you can use the side of the crayon to fill in an area quickly.

3. Sharpen the crayons carefully with a small, sharp knife.

4. Hold the crayon between your thumb and first finger with the end resting in your palm. This keeps the tip low on the page, creating a more satisfying line. Turn the crayon as necessary.

5. Build up color by going over the same area until the paper is holding as much color as it can. Be careful not to put too much color on. There is sometimes a fine line between too little and too much. If you have too much color built up, loosen it with a crumpled piece of paper towel, then flick the paper to make the dust fall off. Don't let the dust resettle on the paper.

6. Smooth the lines with your finger, blending stump, tortillion or a bit of paper towel.

Tips & Warnings

• Clean off your crayons before using them so you don't accidentally lay down a color that rubbed off from another project. Wash your hands often and take care not to rest your hands or arms on the paper.

Resources

• Artist Jean Vincent for Advice

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on 10/3/2007 Conte crayons don't just come in white, black, gray, sanguine (reddish brown) and bistre. Conte also produces a range of 48 colors in colored Conte crayons in sets of 12, 24 and 48, as well as two specialized sets of 12 Portrait and 12 Landscape. Most of these do contain black, white and a brown, the 12 Color set has brown, the 24 and 48 color sets have several shades of Sanguine and the Portrait set includes more than one value of Sanguine.

The colored Conte crayons handle exactly the same as regular Conte crayons and are soft, like the B or 2B black Conte crayons. Conte comes in different hardnesses in black and white.

Showing a picture of some Conte crayons would help with this article.