Ingres paper is a type of drawing

Drawing

Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...

 paper

Paper

Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....

. It is a laid finish paper

Laid paper

Laid paper is a type of paper having a ribbed texture imparted by the manufacturing process. In the 19th century its use diminished as it was largely supplanted by wove paper...

 of light to medium weight, and it is not as strong or as durable as Bristol paper. Laid finish refers to the imprint of regular screen pattern of a papermaker's mould. Ingres is not necessarily a handmade paper, but is produced to replicate the properties of laid paper. Ingres is often used for charcoal

Charcoal

Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...

 and pastel

Pastel

Pastel is an art medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation....

 drawing. It is also used as an endpaper

Endpaper

The endpapers or end-papers of a book are the leaves of paper before the title page and after the text. Booksellers sometimes refer to the front end paper as FEP....

 in books.

The development of ingres paper for drawing is ascribed to the French Neoclassical artist Dominique Ingres

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest...

 (1780-1867), although modern ingres papers can differ from those actually used by Ingres. Important is that the pattern is a laid mesh. The laid effect creates a toothy grain of close lines on one side and a mottled surface on the reverse. The toothiness allows the paper to take charcoal easily and evenly. Ingres paper is favored in book arts for its antique appearance and pH

PH

In chemistry, pH is a measure of the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution. Pure water is said to be neutral, with a pH close to 7.0 at . Solutions with a pH less than 7 are said to be acidic and solutions with a pH greater than 7 are basic or alkaline...

 neutrality.

Prominent manufactures include Canson

Canson

-Origins:The story goes that Jean Montgolfier was taken prisoner by the Turks during the Crusades. He was compelled to work in a paper mill in Damascus. Here he learned how to produce paper, knowledge he brought back to Europe, when regaining his freedom....

, Hahnemühle

Hahnemühle

Hahnemühle FineArt, Inc. is a paper manufacturing company in the Relliehausen district of Dassel, Germany. It is the world's leading producer of coated papers for ink jet printing...

 (sometimes called "German Ingres"), and Fabriano. Ingres paper has a high rag content (around 65%) and is gelatin sized

Sizing

Sizing or size is any one of numerous specific substances that is applied to or incorporated in other material, especially papers and textiles, to act as a protecting filler or glaze....

. It is available in a variety of colors.