“The Impressionists made the bold statement that line does not exist. For people whose culture is held together with writing…this is a very hard fact to accept…. We take line so much for granted that we all think line is a basic part of the structure of the universe.”
— Nathan Cole Hale, Abstraction in Art & Nature, page 17
The inventor of Conte crayons, a form of hard pastel that’s square not round and pencils made with a core of graphite between wood, Nicolas-Jacques Conte, was born on today (4 August) in Normandy in 1755. Faced with a pastel we all too easily only use the point to draw with lines instead of also using it on its side to draw with blocks of colour (without line). The angular edges to Conte are great for both types of markmaking without changing what you’re using.