Conté (; ), also called the Conté stick or Conté crayon, is a

drawing Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

medium Medium may refer to: Aircraft *Medium bomber, a class of warplane * Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''The Medium'' (1921 film), a German silent film * ''The Medium'' (1951 film), a film vers ...

composed of compressed powdered

graphite Graphite () is a Crystallinity, crystalline allotrope (form) of the element carbon. It consists of many stacked Layered materials, layers of graphene, typically in excess of hundreds of layers. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable ...

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, ca ...

mixed with a

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impuriti ...

base, square in cross-section. It was invented in 1795 by

Nicolas-Jacques Conté Nicolas-Jacques Conté (; 4 August 1755 – 6 December 1805) was a French inventor of the modern pencil. He was born at Saint-Céneri-près-Sées (now Aunou-sur-Orne) in Normandy and distinguished himself for his mechanical genius, which was of ...

, who created the combination of clay and graphite in response to the shortage of graphite caused by the

Napoleonic Wars {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

(when the British naval blockade of France prevented import). Conté crayons had the advantage of being

cost-effective Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is a form of economic analysis that compares the relative costs and outcomes (effects) of different courses of action. Cost-effectiveness analysis is distinct from cost–benefit analysis, which assigns a monetar ...

to produce, and easy to manufacture in controlled grades of

hardness In materials science, hardness (antonym: softness) is a measure of the resistance to plastic deformation, such as an indentation (over an area) or a scratch (linear), induced mechanically either by Pressing (metalworking), pressing or abrasion ...

. They are now manufactured using natural

pigment A pigment is a powder used to add or alter color or change visual appearance. Pigments are completely or nearly solubility, insoluble and reactivity (chemistry), chemically unreactive in water or another medium; in contrast, dyes are colored sub ...

s (

iron oxide An iron oxide is a chemical compound composed of iron and oxygen. Several iron oxides are recognized. Often they are non-stoichiometric. Ferric oxyhydroxides are a related class of compounds, perhaps the best known of which is rust. Iron ...

carbon black Carbon black (with subtypes acetylene black, channel black, furnace black, lamp black and thermal black) is a material produced by the incomplete combustion of coal tar, vegetable matter, or petroleum products, including fuel oil, fluid cataly ...

titanium dioxide Titanium dioxide, also known as titanium(IV) oxide or titania , is the inorganic compound derived from titanium with the chemical formula . When used as a pigment, it is called titanium white, Pigment White 6 (PW6), or Colour Index Internationa ...

(

kaolin Kaolinite ( ; also called kaolin) is a clay mineral, with the chemical composition Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet of silica () linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedral sheet of alumina (). ...

), and a

binder Binder may refer to: Businesses * Binder FBM, a former German jewelry manufactory * Binder Dijker Otte & Co., the expansion of "BDO" in BDO International Computing * Binder Project, package and share interactive, reproducible environments * Fil ...

(cellulose ether). Conté crayons are most commonly found in black, white, and

sanguine Sanguine () or red chalk is chalk of a reddish-brown color, so called because it resembles the color of dried blood. It has been popular for centuries for drawing. The word comes via French from the Italian ''sanguigna'' and originally from the ...

tones, as well as

bistre Bistre (or bister) is a pigment made from soot. Historically, beechwood was burned to produce the soot, which was boiled and diluted with water. Many Old Masters used bistre as the ink for their wash paintings. Bistre's appearance is generall ...

, shades of

grey Grey (more frequent in British English) or gray (more frequent in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning that it has no chroma. It is the color of a cloud-covered s ...

, and other colors. Colors sets are especially useful for field studies and color studies. Some artists create entire paintings with them, using them more like pastels than like a drawing medium. They are also used often to sketch under pastel paintings or lay down initial layers before using dry pastels. Colors can be layered to produce different hues or values. Color Conté mixes better on paper than many hard pastel products. They are frequently used on rough paper that holds pigment grains well. They can also be used on prepared primed

canvas Canvas is an extremely durable Plain weave, plain-woven Cloth, fabric used for making sails, tents, Tent#Marquees and larger tents, marquees, backpacks, Shelter (building), shelters, as a Support (art), support for oil painting and for other ite ...

es for

underdrawing Underdrawing is a preparatory drawing done on a painting ground before paint is applied, for example, an imprimatura or an underpainting. Underdrawing was used extensively by 15th century painters like Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. Thes ...

for a painting. Conté crayons are hard and have square edges, making them more suitable for detailed hatched work as opposed to the bolder

painterly Painterliness is a concept based on ' ('painterly'), a word popularized by Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) to help focus, enrich and standardize the terms being used by art historians of his time to characterize Work of ...

drawing style demanded by soft

pastel A pastel () is an art medium that consists of powdered pigment and a binder (material), binder. It can exist in a variety of forms, including a stick, a square, a pebble, and a pan of color, among other forms. The pigments used in pastels are ...

Georges Seurat

In the 1880s,

Georges Seurat Georges Pierre Seurat ( , ; ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough ...

used Conté crayons to produce many of his studies.

References

External links

* Visual arts materials Drawing fr:Pastel#Pastels durs {{Art-material-stub

Georges Seurat

See also

References

External links