Conté

The conté crayon was invented in the 18th Century by the French scientist and inventor of the graphite pencil, Nicolas Jaques Conté. Conté crayons are hard and non-greasy sticks of colour. They are often broken by artists and the flat side is used to shade large areas of colour. The edge or point is used to draw hard and dark lines. They are typically in four colours: sepia, two shades of dark grey, black and sanguine – a red-orange colour classically used by the old masters.