Yesterday, I posted on instagram a sketch I made of a still life in our new/old house on that cold, rainy afternoon. I made this on a Stillman and Birn gray Nova sketchbook, using colored pencils and other assorted materials.
This sketch took me right back to another interior still life I made at the house of dear friends four years ago at just this time of year. Atmosphere!
These started me looking back at the many drawings and sketches and some paintings I've made on toned paper for many years.
Gray and tan paper automatically provide a lovely mid tone to give lines and colors a soaring start in life. This has many advantages. For a traveler like me, who takes only a carryon suitcase even on long international trips, I can pack a few pens, crayons, pencils and still have the range and flexibility I want.
Crucially for me, this paper guarantees the kind of atmospheric work I strive for. And since I love to travel to, shall we say, atmospheric places like Norway, Wales, and Iceland, quite often in atmospheric seasons like winter, it is perfect for the task.
I have used three kinds of toned paper over the years: kraft paper, pastel paper (very rarely), and both Strathmore and Stillman and Birn toned paper in sketchbooks.
When I went to Alaska for an art residency a few years ago, I took along some high quality kraft paper to use for landscape studies. The ability to make atmospheric drawings with an economy of means was critical. Here are two of many from that project:
Toned paper has traditionally been used for pastel drawings/paintings. I'm not a pastelist, but I have used it occasionally, for my own purpose. Here I've used watercolor on pastel paper. The toothed softness of the paper gives the watercolors a texture boost and the bright colors against the gray/tan paper come to life.
Finally, I have so many of the above-mentioned atmospheric travel sketches to show you that I'll have to sit on my hands and just pick a few. Before there was Stillman and Birns toned sketchbooks, there were Strathmore ones and I used them plenty. Below are examples from both brands.
If you've seen this blog before, you've seen scores of my cold weather outdoor atmospherics on toned paper, so I won't repeat them, but here's a link to work from a recent December trip to Norway.
Atmospheric indoor scene at a Norwegian café in December:
Woman waiting at the Vienna train station on another chilly December day:
Blue jellyfish washed ashore in Abersoch, Wales. I adored how the cool colors and degrees of opacity behaved on the warmish gray Stillman and Birn paper!
New Year's Eve warmth and light in our seaside cottage on Whitesands Bay, Pembrokeshire, two years ago:
Hot chocolate helped ward off the cold at an outdoor market in Vancouver a while back in a Strathmore sketchbook:
I'm now sitting on my hands. Enough atmospherics! I do have other uses for toned paper, particularly in the making of expressive drawings and museum drawings! Let that be a story for another day.
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