2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
Italian pencil or black chalk is one type of painting tool. It is used in portraits, as well as for depicting nude human nature.
Divided into three hardness grades: soft, medium and hard.
History of Creation
The Italian pencil has been widely known since the 15th century, but before that it was already used in the trecento era (14th century). It is called in this way only in Russia. Everywhere the material has a different name - "black chalk".
In the records "Book of Art" by the artist Cennino Cennini from 1437, one stone is mentioned, with which it became possible to draw like coal. He found some special material for drawing, obtained in Piedmont (Italy). According to Cennino Cennini, this stone was so soft that it could be perfected by sharpening it with a knife.
After the discovery of the deposit, the Italian pencil quickly won the hearts of masters and became available in all European countries. But, unfortunately, its reserves quickly dried up, as happened with graphite. New vaults of black chalk have been found in Thuringia and Andalusia.
Florence and Rome were adherents of a strict style of linear drawing, therefore they were quite categorical about the new pencil, which cannot be said about Lombardy, where they experienced great interest in it.
Italian pencil: meaning and characteristics
The tool that the artist Cennino Cennini found for painting on canvas turned out to be black shale.
Black chalk replaced lead and silver pencils. Based on the opportunities that have appeared, thanks to the new properties of the tool that has appeared, there has been a change in both fashion and genres in drawing:
- composition of the picture has become more free;
- tone and volume have become more saturated;
- small formats have been replaced by large ones;
- clear drawing style moved to a more vague look;
- the emphasis was now placed not on the line, but on chiaroscuro;
- artists began to prefer working with stain, thus opening up more possibilities in art.
Black chalk comes in freestyle pencils and has a deep matte velvety dark color. The material blends quite easily on the paper surface.
Production
The Italian pencil was reproduced in several ways, according to different recipes. The original included materials such as burnt bone powder and vegetable glue, which were held together.
Then the French found another wayformations of black chalk: they mixed white clay with lamp black. In connection with the invented recipe, a new type of pencil appeared - French, or Parisian.
Currently Italian pencil is made from:
- pieces of coal and soot, fastened with glue or a mixture of carbon black;
- graphite;
- starch;
- gypsum.
Recipe
To get black chalk, the master will need:
- one piece graphite;
- one part of carbon black;
- one part neutral black carbon;
- thirteen pieces of plaster;
- seven pieces of bonding material (carbon black or glue).
All components are qualitatively ground, doing it in a colloid mill. Next, rectangular pencils are pressed from the resulting mixture and singeed at a temperature of 150-250 degrees for about two to four hours. The hardness of an Italian pencil will depend on the firing time.
The biggest masters
Some of the best masters of black chalk were the painter Hans Holbein (junior) and French pencil portrait artists such as Prudhon and Clouet. It was also brilliantly owned by Leonardo da Vinci, Tintoretto, Rubens, Bakst, Serov and others, whose names can be listed for a long time.
Holbein's Italian pencil drawings exuded clarity, conciseness, and at the same time displayed the softness of the stroke on paper.
The works of French artists were enoughvaried. So, Clouet's handwriting was distinguished by elegance, sophistication and lightness.
Master Lanyo's line was denser and rougher.
It was interesting to play with a pencil and Tintoretto, who resorted either to active pressure, or to short strokes of a rounded shape, or to sharply cut off the lines.
The 19th-century artist Prudhon Pierre Paul created soft lyrical images using black chalk.
Useful Facts
The Italian drawing pencil can be made in two ways:
natural - consists of black shale (slate rock);
artificial - materials are bound with vegetable glue (French pencil)
The last pencil (French) can only be drawn on thick paper that can withstand a long friction process without damaging the surface. The pencil should be applied with a stroke and rubbed on paper with the help of special devices: rags, glove leather, plain cotton wool, or with the participation of the classic version - the finger.
Bread, gum or nag (dark rubber soaked in gasoline, turpentine or kerosene, which has soft and sticky properties) are great for correcting mistakes.
When working on tone paper, chalk or white paint is used in light areas of the drawing with an Italian pencil.
In Italy, since the Renaissance, a method called "the technique of threepencils". Its meaning is a combination of three colors:
- white (chalk);
- red (sepia or sanguine);
- black (charcoal).
At present, in addition to the materials described above, not only charcoal is used in this technique, therefore, instead of it, an Italian pencil is perfect for transferring black.
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