Drawing On Red Toned Paper

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I got my first taste of drawing on red paper when Field Notes released a set of small notebooks containing brightly colored papers.  I posted a bunch of the sketches I’d done at that time.  The only problem with this was that I find drawing in Field Notes to be unsatisfactory because of the very soft nature of their softcover and their very thin floppy nature.

A large wooden sculpture with a stone face looking out of it.

I was in the art student coop here and found some light card/cover stock in red and I bought a couple sheets of it.  I wasn’t sure it would handle fountain pen ink but at $0.39 for an 11×17 sheet of the stuff I thought I could take a chance.  As it turned out, it’s really nice to draw on as I found out the next day when I went to our museum.  Here are those results.

A couple baskets and some sort of megaphone made of leather

4 thoughts on “Drawing On Red Toned Paper”

  1. A-ha — red is the new toned tan! 😉 As you know, I’m a huge fan of sketching on red with black and white inks. You’ve really made them pop on this bright paper!

    – Tina

    • I think you need suitable subjects for these brighter papers. I may be wrong but I think that translates to ‘simple’ subjects where outline is THE thing that attracts

    • tan colored paper is great for reducing the contrast of contour and it does provide the benefit of being able to use white for highlights. I like to use it for quick sketching. I’ve drawn the sculpture in my post once before on white paper. This allowed me to deal with the internal curvatures of the wood independent of tone using watercolor and clearly it made for a better presentation. I think red paper might work better for simple, small sketches for the simple reason is that it generates such a dark ‘mid-tone.’

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