Sneezes with Goats

I have never been able to do things the easy way. If left to my own devices, I will come up with the most complicated way possible (and then beat myself up about it when it fails to work).

Today I am trying to slap-together an illustration using a “lost” technique that looks best on a board that hasn’t been manufactured since 1971 - but first the board must be smoothed with the skin of a goat native to the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania. Really.

Smooth, continuous-tone illustrations made with a pencil were
not smooth enough for German-born medical illustrator Max Brödel. Shortly after the first world war he invented the technique known as carbon-dust. It is one of those methods that produces amazing results, but has become lost due, I believe, to the complexity factor. Most illustration manuals devote two pages to setting up the supplies and preparing the board, followed by one paragraph on application, and another page on keeping everything clean. Computer illustration programs can now produce similar effects for publication with much less mess and without the storage issues carbon-dust involves.

Nonetheless, I am determined to pull off an illustration in this fashion. I have piles of dust scraped from various charcoal pencils using fine sandpaper. I have good quality paint brushes that have never touched water, their bristles flecked with black dust. I have measured some inferior (but much cheaper) board, lifted all blemishes from the surface with a kneaded eraser, and rubbed the whole thing with an honest-to-goodness chamois.

When I first started illustration classes, I was encouraged to buy a “real” chamois, “not one of those synthetic things.” It would be more expensive, but I would never regret it. However, the common artistic pronunciation is “shammy,” not the vaguely French “cham-WAH”, so for a long time I did not connect the advice with the correct tool on the supply list. 

Looking it up in the dictionary didn’t help any. A chamois is a type of mountain goat. Native to South Central Europe (primarily Transylvania), the Rupricapra rupicapra can leap vertically 6.5 feet while running 30 miles per hour over uneven ground. The leather made from the skin of these animals is amazingly non-abrasive, and absorptive. This is good, especially if you are trying to blend charcoal smoothly without getting fingerprints in it. I find that you can buy a larger shammy at the auto supply store (cheaper for the size), cut off a bit for the art box and use the rest to clean your car windows.

After a blithe direction to “paint the dust onto the board,” a caution that not all fixatives work, and that framing is a hassle, the illustration books all end with a final note of caution: Don’t sneeze.

Chamois sketch in ink

Actual carbon-dust image coming soon!