Creating toned paper.

[dark eagle]

Before anyone says why not buy it it's because the manufactured toned paper isn't as varied in color and not as interesting. And an advanage of doing is at the end the paper feels a lot better to work with.

You'll need a empty washing liquid container(preferably transarent) but it'll do as long as the containers top look like this one
390660

Pour some coka cola into it just till it fills an eighth of the bottle and then put the rest of it as water. Play about with the ratio of coke to water. Try to get an even spray otherwise it may rip. Bet your thinking by now "but what if it curls" if it does iron it. Yes people you heard me iron it with a thin cloth on top of it.

Of course this works after the charcoal or graphite has gone down as long as you spray something on it which makes it stick down(hairspray) first.

I've tried it before, gives a little edge to your drawing.

[dark eagle]

And if you do it after the drawing of say an muscle you can add some form to it as well by a bit more of the spray to the darker parts.

[CCThrom]

Hairspray is not a replacement for fixative.

You can substitute coffee or tea for coke if you like though. They make different kinds of stain & are very good for antique paper effects. I sometimes tone paper with a light watercolor wash too.

[Black Spot]

What's wrong with an old teabag?

[dark eagle]

a tea bag would work very well. And I think it depends on the coffee but the ones I've used somehow gave a purple stain. And I don't know which hairspray you've used but I know that shock wave(a good hairspray in england) is the best replacement if it can fix my hair which cover some of my eyes and is thicker then a jungle it can definitely handle some charcoal

[Farvus]

Thanks pyrokid.

Hairspray is not a replacement for fixative.

I used hairspray long time ago on charcoal sketches and it works. Maybe not as well as fixative but it's enough.

[dark eagle]

Another thing someone talked about aging this method isn't particularly good for aging.

But i know one which is. Inks, sponges and water.

Soak a sponge in water and squeeze it in the palm of your hand to make the water come out put a corner in the ink and run it along the side of your paper and coupled with the toning method should make it look pretty old.

Or after the toning go over the paper again with a LIGHT spray of water and the with a dry sponge just dab it around, makes something similar to the overlay texture method in photoshop.

[Ilaekae]

In my usual fashion, I'm going to bring up a slight problem by telling a stupid story...

Once upon a time, there was a young-artist-in-training (just like me) who had (un-named friends) who may or may not have been involved in the transfer of certain varieties of the hemp family for unknown (to me) reasons. This transfer involved the Mexican and Canadian borders (I don't know why) and to insure minimal hassle in handling, the "hemp of unknown derivation" was dried and packed into wooden molds to make bricks...so to speak...of a regular size. Now we all know that dried plants can't hold together on their own. They need an "adhesive" or sticky additive to help in this process that is not fatal to human beings (why, I have no idea?)...

Why is this important? Well, apparently, Coca-Cola is the perfect "additive" and has no after effects, save one...

The young artist (who was just like me) had a very messy house and very nosey neighbors, so he didn't have much room to safely store the plastic-wrapped "bricks" for his friends (whose names have long been forgotten), so he lifted the floor boards and stored them in the rafters between the second and third floors of his humble abode. Imagine his surprise a week later when he went to complete the transfer of said substances and discovered that his entire house was now an enormous anthill. A huge fucking anthill. With 700 bazillion quadrillion ants of all shapes and sizes...all feeding off something SWEET and STICKY that happened to be holding together a bunch of old dried out weeds between the second and third floors.

Dear Pykrokid,

Coke is mostly sugar. Sugar is sticky. And takes years to "dry." And attracts insects and moulds of every type known to man...

Did I veer too far off topic here for anyone? ...putzes...:P

[dark eagle]

Well if its sticky isn't that a good thing then your art won't ever die out for years to come as long as you keep it from the floor or ants.

But guess i should have said ink or stuff but

the coffee i use stain purple when its diluted with water
the ink also makes the same problem
teabag is perfect should have thought of that.
So i used a not so famous version of cola which is completely dark(which i dared not to drink) and stains a perfect goldfish brownish with even cola-water and redish with more cola and so on and so forth. I've tried it with normal warm coke and it did stain a lovely brown and there aern't any sccary numbers of ants where I live in England.

thanks blackspot fot the teabagging comment