Chalk is used primarily by artists as a drawing medium as well as the base for several other artists materials. It comes from the earth and is a natural occurring substance. In it's natural state is quite hard to touch, but it is really very brittle and soft.

Ground chalk is called whiting and is used as an ingredient in gouaches, pastels, various pencils, as it gives a chalky tooth to the color finish. Chalk is also used as a thickener for modeling pastes and texture pastes used for impasto painting techniques. Chalk is also used in plaster as it can be poured as a liquid and set in mold as a solid and then easily sanded or carved.

Various synthetic chalks have different properties to the natural chalks. Precipitated chalk, as an example, is very soft and used in the manufacture of extra soft pastels.

Ochre, is actually a type of chalk too, considered a hard chalk. Traditional earth colors such as red (also called ‘sanguine’) brown, grey, black and white were the classical drawing materials for figure drawing. They produce very beautiful results and many drawing artists continue to use these colors for their aesthetic appeal, especially on colored papers. In old master days silver ‘holders’ would have a tip of sharpened hard chalk at each end much like the modern day pencil for easy drawing.