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I went to Sugarhouse Park and sketched along Parley's Creek. Parley's Creek is named after an early LDS church leader, or rather the canyon that the creek flows down was named after him, it became the canyon most of the pioneers used to get down to the Salt Lake Valley, currently Interstate 80 uses it.
You get a lot of densely packed nature along a creek, plants do love water, it can be difficult to organize all those values, shapes and textures. I decided to try a different tool for capturing all that value and texture quickly, General's "Sketch and Wash" water soluble graphite pencil. In combination with a water brush the Sketch and Wash pencil allowed me to draw, fill in tones and spread it all around very quickly. Even a seemingly simple little nature sketch as above can have a lot going on in it. The Sketch and Wash pencil allowed me to put in some relatively flat and smooth areas of tone along with smooth gradations, but since it's a pencil it can be used to put down line and texture very easily as well, just draw normally and don't add water, on do a dry brush only slightly modifying the pencil lines. The possibilities for tone and texture are nearly endless. I would compare the hardness of the Sketch and Wash to a 2B normal graphite pencil.
Is there a downside to the Sketch and Wash? Yes there is, you have to treat it more or less like watercolor, it can't really be erased once set with water. Even before setting it with water the Sketch and Wash pencil does not erase as well as normal graphite. However, like watercolor, if an area is too dark just wet it and then use a paper towel to dap it and remove the excess graphite, or sometimes just wiping your brush and then applying again to the area is enough, however it's impossible to get all the way back to the white of the paper, so preserve those highlights!
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This sketch was done just a little ways upstream of the previous. Again the Sketch and Wash pencil allowed me to quickly capture all the shapes and tones of those abstract shapes created by the tree roots. One other thing about the Sketch and Wash pencil is you can't get truly black darks with it, not even as dark as normal graphite, I knew this going in and took a Generals Carbon Sketch pencil with me which makes about the blackest blacks marks I've ever seen to supplement the Sketch and Wash however I forgot to use it! Oh well, maybe next time, and there will definitely be a next time, I think this has become one of my all time favorite sketching tools.
The other "tool" I used today is the sketchbook which is a Stillman and Birnes Beta Series. The Beta Series have semi-heavy paper with moderate texture for use as a mixed media sketchbook. The paper took the water used in making these sketches great, not warping or wrinkling at all, however if you did heavy overall wet washes I'm sure the paper would warp some from that so I'd suggest keeping water application on the conservative side. Also, the texture is a little too heavy for a straight up graphite pencil sketch in my opinion, the texture just overwhelms the pencil marks however it works great with the Sketch and Wash since you can use water to cause the graphite to fill in the grain of the paper with tone
It was really good to get out in nature today, though since it was at a public park it was more noisy that I would have liked but well worth it...until the heat got turned up then it was time to head home. It's kind of funny, it's late August and our temps are still in the 90's yet I am seeing some trees starting to turn to their fall colors, soon we'll be saying good bye to summer...sigh, I better make the most of it and get out more often with my sketchbook.
