My first sauce drawing:
 

I saw Peggy Baumgaertner do a demonstration in sauce painting (drawing) at the PSOA conference last April, and finally decided to give the medium a try. It's intriguing! My main tool was the kneaded eraser.

Love those Edges!
 

Cathy,

I love this drawing, particularly the lost edges around the head area, gives it a "glow" effect.

Beautiful!

Oh, Cathy, this is gorgeous work. Well done! I couldn't seem to get this level of detail in the few times I've attempted working in sauce. Can you explain, exactly, how you did this? Did you wet the paper at all?

I don't know if you saw Peggy Baumgaertner's demonstration. For me, that was a big eye opener. She ground up the sauce with a mortar and pestle and poured the powder into a black tight, itself a messy undertaking. Then she covered the surface of the paper with a light coating of the sauce-in-the-tight, and then proceeded with drawing, with a kneaded eraser for lighter areas, and with a tortillon or brush, for darks.

I started out that way, too. You can make a kneaded eraser into quite a refined tool if you hold it in your hand long enough to be able to model it. Going lighter was much easier than going darker. I had to smear many coats of sauce to build up areas of dark.

I stayed away from wetting the sauce until I was fairly satisfied with the placement and shapes of the drawing, mindful that once wet sauce dries, it stays. Using a dry brush or tortillon results only in a subtle darkening. Wetting it later, once you're sure you want it, is the best way to procede. Even then, the darkening of the sauce is not radical, and you can put a fresh layer of dry sauce atop the dried wet sauce and repeat the process to deepen the darks.

Applying sauce directly with the stick will give you a dark and not very smearable line. For really dark areas, a little hatching with the sauce stick will do. Don't allow it to get too different from the rest of the drawing.

With sauce, the best way to go is to proceed with caution. I felt as if I were "tickling" the drawing out of the paper, not my usual way of getting started or proceeding. Therefore, I found it to be an intriguing experience.

Catherine,

Very nice indeed. Would (could) you compare your experience with sauce to a piece of black soft pastel chalk? Do you see any benefit to the sauce in either the "process" or the "finished work?"

Mike,

That's a very good question. I know pastel is water soluable, and that I played with that feature in the pastel drawing I have above for critique. Wetted pastel, though is erasable, even if it involves more elbow grease than dry pastel. Dried wetted sauce is harder to erase.

The plus of sauce is most apparent with people who like to work with a light touch. I'd like to see a sauce pencil. It is far easier to remove than to apply sauce. Where I got the sauce wet, as, for instance, in the little floral thingies in the blouse, I was able to put more sauce over that and remove the excess without bothering the previously wetted sauce.

It'd be worth trying out: doing a pastel or charcoal using the same approach as with the sauce. I have to give it a go. Maybe the sauce effects can be had with pastel or charcoal, if the work is approached in the same way. Hm!

Well, like I said at the top, you posed a very good question.

Thanks for the reply Catherine, if you could humor me for a couple more questions.

I much prefer using soft black pastel chalk to charcoal because I can get much darker values with the pastel. It appears to me that the end product pastel drawing would look very similar to that of the sauce drawing, although I've only seen the sauce on the computer. But from everything I've read about sauce, it appears to be very difficult in the "process" stage.

If you did not use any water, applied the pastel chalk directly to the paper. Then using fingers, brushes, tortillons, and "fixing" the chalk when necessary, do you think the end product would be appreciably different than that of a sauce drawing? Such that it would warrant the additional headaches that I perceive are inherent in the sauce process.

Would you explain what a "black tight" is, also the term "sauce-in-the-tight?"

Mike,

I've got my second sauce drawing in progress; it's going to have lots of very dark darks in it. After that, I'll maybe try out the soft pastel and/or charcoal. You pose an interesting question, which I'll be able to answer when I give the pastel a try. I'm also considering the idea of using a sauce drawing as an underpainting for a pastel, as one of Peggy Baumgaertner's posts mentioned.

I've been primarily painting in oil, and drawing in graphite, and recently in colored pencil. I'm having a go at the sauce, pastels, charcoals for the first time either in a long while, or ever. I'm on a try-out-various-ways-of-making-works-on-paper-binge.

As for the black tights. Those are opaque panty hose. That's what Peggy Baumgaertner said to use. Black tights are made of a blend of cotton and spandex. Anyway, I snipped off a lower part of the leg and put the ground sauce in it. Much of it made it into the sock; the rest, well, I found out what Peggy meant when it's a mess to clean up.

One more thing.
 

Mike,

One more thing. Once you've done the fill the tights with sauce thing, that'll last for quite a while. Through many, many pictures. So it's a headache only at first.

Cathy,

I read about Peggy's technique and she also (very kindly and patiently) explained the process to me via email, though I didn't see the video. Your work, and a revisitation of Peggy's, has inspired me to give it another go. Maybe I'll try black pastel as well. Keep posting your drawings, please!

Mike,

Most of the complaints about the sauce process have probably come from me. (What's that saying, 'it's a bad workman who blames his tools'?) I pathologically and pathetically pulverized and pounced that peculiar perdurable particulate until I suffered a paroxysm.

Incredible
 

This has become one of my favorite pieces posted here. I hope it's not my screen playing tricks on me, but I love the very subtle contrast in the eyes, then the strong dark on the hand. Beautiful job.

Super!
 

I think you have found your muse.

Cathy,

I'm very impressed with this! Wow!

Lovely work.

The main question I have is where did you get sauce? I've been hearing about it for a year or two and have been wanting to try it but mislaid my notes about where it can be found. Thanks.

Cathy,

I've long admired your online portfolio, and it's great to watch you stretch into new mediums. You've nailed one of the most alluring qualities of sauce: the powdery softness and the deep, but quiet darks.

Gary,

Click on the Dick Blick box at the top of any page on this site. Then, search "sauce" and you'll find it. You won't find it cheaper, and the small rebate Cynthia gets is a great way to say thank you for her great work.

It is no longer available in this country in all-black boxes, but the different values in the box are all beautiful and worth experimenting with.

Catherine,

I don't remember you mentioning the size of this wonderful drawing (painting). Also, is there a "fixing" of the sauce as you might with a pastel or charcoal?

Mike,

The picture is 18" x 14" and I used a fixitif for charcoal and pencil. Some parts of the drawing were not wetted. Thanks for reminding me to post the dimensions of the picture.

Cathy,

This is a wonderful piece of art! I tried once or twice experimenting with sauce, but did not get very far with it. The texture is quite different to that of pastels. After reading the information you give on this thread, I realized that there is a lot that I did know about using sauce!! Gotta go and give it another try!

Mai :)

Saucy number
 

Beautiful drawing, Catherine. Was this a commission?

Very nice,

Lovely, Catherine! It has a real presence.

Wowie!
 

You do impressive work anyway and this one's awesome. That one resounding highlight on the nose works very well. I appreciate your reserve.

Catherine,

Wonderful work! In this lovely drawing, you've shown what I think is the greatest benefit to using sauce as opposed to another medium. It truly is unlike any other media in it subtlety, finesse, and powerful darks and lights. I guess that is what I love best about it. I've always been a sucker for extremes, the dance between detail and painterliness, real and imagined, color and tone. Walking the razor's edge.

When using sauce, you are walking the edge between huge/massive/stark value jumps, while at the same time creating exquisitely minute value shifts within the value masses. It is the best way I have found to really understand and study subtle value. The fact that Ivan Kramskoy worked a lot in sauce over a period of 10-15 years is the reason he is (to my mind) the greatest master of values I have ever seen.