A Brief History of Black Drawing MaterialsDuring the Industrial Revolution, particularly around 1850
A Brief History of Black Drawing MaterialsDuring the Industrial Revolution, particularly around 1850, the range and availability of black drawing materials exploded in France.Previously limited to simple materials like natural black chalk, artists began experimenting with man-made black media such as conte crayon and fabricated black chalk.Artists made black prints and drawings with increasing concern for the properties and effects of their materials. The meanings and significance of the color black also played large roles as artists searched for a new world of subject matter.Artists used these new techniques to explore darkness and its associations with the deeper recesses of the human condition—evil, cruelty, and death.Other artists were using black media to portray the rusticity of rural existence and the gritty, shadowy spaces of urban life. Around this time landscape artists were using charcoal for its ethereal effects to show dappled sunlight, placid water, and feathery leaves.One color, so many ways to use it. So many interpretations. Its the subject of a drawings show on view at the Getty through May 15, Noir: The Romance of Black in 19th-Century Prints. -- source link
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