Tuesday, May 26, 2009

The Colors of Conte

After my experiments with sepia I decided to see what other colors are out there. So far I've picked up these three Conte colors: sepia, bistre, and sanguine. Sepia and bistre are very close, but sepia is just a bit redder. Sanguine looks a bit more like rust. In these samples, the left side is hard pressure, middle is light pressure, and the right is blended with a tortillon.

In a few days I'll have some more colors to show off, from a different brand.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, I found your blog while searching for conte crayons. My drawing instructor wants us to have sepia crayons but I can't find them anywhere! Sanguine and Bistre by contrast are available everywhere. I've searched every major art store and they just don't exist. I think it's possible sepia is one of the colors in the conte sketch sets, but I can't find the colors listed anywhere on the box. All of the sticks are labeled by number, but I have no idea what number sepia is. Any advice (a source for your sepia crayon, or which 4-digit number corresponds to sepia) would be appreciated.

Anonymous said...

How rude of me...I looked through your blog and your drawings are beautiful and sensitive. You really have a special empathy for animals and an amazing skill with charcoal!

Heather Ward said...

Thank you very much, Meredith! I bought my sepia Conte pencil at a local shop. I couldn't find it online just now, except as part of a set or a box of 12 at Dick Blick.

I have a three-digit code, 617, at the upper end of the pencil. My bistre sticks have a four-digit number, but I don't have any sepia sticks. I hope this helps!