Drawing in Conte Crayon: African Model.
I’m a gingery Celt living in a predominately gingery Celtic part of the country so it’s an absolute joy to have a new model from Africa working with our life drawing group. Swansea has had a fair bit of immigration in the past, as it was a thriving port and is a thousand years old, but most dark-skinned immigrants, like my own grandfather, came here some generations ago and married local gingery Celts, so the gene pool tends to be rather pale and freckly and more recent immigrants are mostly Asian. It’s the first time that I’ve had the opportunity to draw African skin from life and, yeah I know it’s stating the obvious, but it’s very different so a new approach was called for.
I have a set of conte crayons which includes a range of rich browns, that I rarely use. Absolutely perfect for our model! I prepared some pages in a ‘Seawhites of Brighton’ A4 Fabriano bound sketchbook by Prittsticking some handmade paper randomly into it. I like to work across different colours and textures. The model posed for a full hour and at first I focussed on getting the line of the face and head correct, very different to the Caucasian and Asian models I’ve previously worked with so took a lot of concentration. Then onto the colour and texture of her skin and hair, which gave me an opportunity to indulge in some free mark-making. I enjoyed it, our group enjoyed it, our model enjoyed it so here’s to a long and happy partnership with our new muse.
