Adding a Background

Adding a Background

I share this project to show how to add a mid tone background to an existing drawing.
In the image below we can see my original drawing, with a white background.
It's a portrait demo that I did with a model during a workshop on Leonardo da Vinci that I gave in Mexico City at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in 2019.

In the portrait I only use black and red (sanguine) charcoals, the background is the off-white of the paper, a cotton hot press 300 grams sheet.
Domestika has now produced a version of this wonderful workshop and made it available to a much wider audience so that I could share the knowledge with all of you! And at a very accessible price.

Click here to see the course!

After the course was filmed I decided to add a background to this existing portrait.

I added a light wash of umber watercolor (van dyke brown) to the entire surface of the drawing, I was very afraid to blur the existing chalk since I don't use fixative in my drawings so my wash was not as dark as I wanted, but close enough, the picture doesn't who well the general tone but it's darker that what you see on screen.
I was then able to introduce white chalk in the highlights areas of the portrait and I obtained more volume to the shape of the head.

Based on my experience, If you want to add a background I would follow these simple rules:
- make sure your paper is cotton and heavy weight (300g up) otherwise stretch it but a light pulp paper will not do.
- try this process on an exiting drawing that you don't mind messing up before you actually do it on the portrait or drawing you selected.
- when doing your experiments make sure to obtain the desired tonal value (it does get lighter when it dries) and produce the desired quantity of paint or even a bit more so that you don't run down during your washes and have to make more because it is very hard to match the correct tonal value.
- you can do this with ink to obtain a more homogeneous wash and faster drying times.