Sketchbook Wednesday #6 - Water Soluble Graphite

This week I decided to try another new to me medium, water soluble graphite, in the form of Derwent Sketching pencils. I picked a rural scene featuring an old granary with a field of grass in front of it and a background full of trees, I don't remember exactly which rural Utah town I took the reference photo in.

The Derwent pencils come in three grades, light wash, medium wash and dark wash.  I started by sketching the composition with the light wash pencil and added some strokes for tone.

Then I applied water with a large round brush to basically "block in" the composition

So, when is a drawing not a drawing?  Or is this still a drawing even though it's become a wet medium now?  Can you paint with graphite?  Based on the definitions that I understand this basically becomes a painting once you use water to turn the graphite strokes into areas of tone, but maybe not, I don't know, I'll let you decide.

Continuing on I basically just did the same thing two more times, first with the medium wash pencil putting in darker tones and more detail and then with the dark wash pencil adding in the final details.  

I have discovered three significant advantages to using water soluble graphite pencils over regular pencils.  First, it's faster because larger areas are covered far more quickly.  Second, it's easier to get dark darks, the reason being that the wash easily fills in the valleys in the texture of the paper.  Third, applying washes kills the shine you normally get with graphite.  I don't know if this is a feature only of the Derwent pencils since I've seen other artists complain of the graphite shine using other soluble materials. At least in my experiment with the Derwent Sketching pencils the shine is almost entirely gone once the water dries.

Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020 - Day 26-28

A good variety of sketch styles in this post, from graphite pencil, to charcoal pencil to pen and watercolor.

Day 26 - Stripped Junkyard Car - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

Prints Available

I kept this one simple, just a quickie using graphite pencils and mostly hatching strokes. The reference photo was taken In Mcbride's Auto Wrecking in Grantsville, Utah.  This wrecking yard was full of classic cars, mostly from the 1950's however they were mostly stripped of useful parts, in this case stripped almost bare, I believe that's a 1956 Mercury Montclair hardtop . Mcbride's is gone now, another victim to dirty politics to push the little guy out in favor of lucrative development. I was fortunate to be able to spend a couple hours there several years ago taking photos, little did I know it would be gone in just a year.  That's a warning for any artist I suppose, don't put off that painting trip or that sketch or photograph that old barn or truck or whatever else you find interesting, it might not be there when you go back if you put it off too long.

Day 27 - Spring City Barn - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

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Sketching with charcoal is simple enough, but I went larger on this one and with a more involved subject, this one took a while.  My reference was a photograph I took in Spring City, a small rural town in Sanpete County, Utah.  I liked all the angles provided by the barn shapes and that it was surrounded by the abstract shapes of foliage.  I toned the paper with sepia watercolor first, for some reason I really enjoy that warm undertone on charcoal drawings.

Day 28 - Antique Toy Truck - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

For day 28 I decided to grab one of the antique toy trucks from my collection and set it on the kitchen table for a life sketch in pen and watercolor.  Every toy truck in my collection is older than me, one by about 30 years.  Why have collected these toy trucks?  I really don't know, I just think they're cool, back when toys were made to last, out of pressed steel, not junk plastic.

Mini Portable Watercolor Sketching Kit

Here's a photo of the mini portable kit I sometimes use for life sketching on location.  Included are; a mechanical pencil, two pens (.1 and .05) two Arteza water brushes, Strathmore 5 X 8 sketchbook, a Sakura 24 color watercolor kit and a paper towel.  The colors in the Sakura kit are a bit weak but this is a very convenient kit as it fits in a regular fanny pack so it can be taken anywhere.

Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020 - Day 12-13

I'm nearing the halfway point of this challenge and I've actually kept up with it and am generating plenty of future painting ideas along the way, however right now it is cutting into the painting time a bit but I think it's worth it.

Day 12 - Country Driveway - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

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This sketch is based on a photograph I took a few years ago in West Mountain, Utah. It's interesting how many towns you discover that you never knew existed while exploring rural areas.  The photo was actually taken in autumn, I decided to give the trees summer color.  Also in the reference there wasn't so much open field in the background.  That shed at the end of the driveway is awfully small, I wonder what they use it for. I've attempted to make a painting based on this before and essentially failed.  With the composition adjustments I made in this sketch I think I might give it a try again some day since the sketch seems to work pretty well.

Day 13 - Two Granaries - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

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I took to the pencils for day 13.  I think graphite is especially effective for rendering rustic rural scenes like this one.  What is interesting about this scene is what you are seeing here is two very different types of granaries.  How do I know the wood structure is a granary?  Because the studs are on the outside of the wall.  To make it easier to clean out all the grain, old style wood granaries were paneled from the inside so there were no obstructions getting in the way of the shovels to clear out the grain.  The granary behind is a "newer" style corrugated metal pre fab type.  I found this little scene in Hennefer, Utah.

Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020 - Day 3-5

Day 3 - Dilapidated Abandoned Barn - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

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The day 3 sketch is a graphite pencil sketch of a dilapidated barn based on a photo I took in Ogden Valley, in the town of Eden, Utah.  This one might make a good painting.

Day 4 - Abandoned Ford Deliver Truck - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

Prints Available

The day 4 sketch is an abandoned antique Ford delivery truck rusting away in the weeds in pen and watercolor. Based on a photo I took at the Antique Power Show in Wallsburg, Utah.

Day 5 - Rural Farm Landscape - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

The day 5 sketch is simple pen sketch of a rural farm scene to test the concept for a painting. Based on a photo I took in Oakley, Utah.

Dragging My Feet

...but at least I've done some sketching.  Yes, it's been about a month and a half since I've posted anything.  Truth is I haven't been making much art lately and what I had done has been mostly experimental, or I've abandoned it before finishing.  I have done some life sketching though.

I did this pen sketch from inside my car out in the southwest quadrant of the valley a couple weeks ago.  Yes, even in the middle of the suburbs you can find the occasional rural subject. I had Franklin Booth's style in mind while sketching this, it's a poor imitation but was an interesting exercise.

It's been a long time since I've been to Wheeler Farm, there have been some changes, however this vintage Minneapolis Moline tractor is still sitting in the exact same place. I've sketched this tractor before, but from an angle in pen and watercolor.  This time I kept it simple and just used a .9 mechanical pencil.

It looks like the winter weather is finally moving in starting tomorrow, I wish I could say I'll get back into the life sketching habit and go out every week but that's going to depend on the weather.

Sketch and Wash

I've been really lax about sketching practice this year, especially life sketching.  It's just been real difficult finding motivation for quite some time.  I decided to try to turn that around today and spend some time this morning sketching out in nature.

Click on image to enlarge

Prints Available

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!

Click on image to enlarge

Prints Available

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.

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A Week for Sketching

I kept my art activities strictly to sketching and playing on the computer this week.  I don't know why, I just wasn't in the mood to pick up the paint brushes.  I think maybe I enjoy sketching quickly and loosely with charcoal rather than doing the tighter, more detailed drawings I've been doing lately.  I think charcoal is a good medium for studying compositions and subjects for painting.  It seems like many figurative artists use charcoal a lot for studies but landscape painters not so much.  Charcoal seems to have a kinship with oil painting that other sketching mediums don't have, I think that's because the marks made with charcoal are so malleable, they can be relatively easily be removed, adjusted and blended much like a brush stroke in oil painting.  Maybe these experiments in charcoal will lead to me giving oil painting a shot again.

"Roots I"

8" X 10" Charcoal on paper

Original - $80

I really like tree roots, especially those that grow from the bases of pine trees when the soil has eroded around them and they no longer have much more than rocks to cling to.  I found this scene in Big Cottonwood Canyon in the Wasatch National Forest in northern Utah.  This area is a short drive from where I live.  I need to visit the local canyons more often, I used to go up there nearly weekly, however the crowds have become kind of overwhelming.

The alternative to going up in the canyons is staying near home and visiting the Jordan River Parkway.  The Parkway is an oasis of nature running through the middle of the heavily populated Salt Lake Valley and even though it's very close by, (I used to walk to it) I don't visit it often enough.  Seems I've been getting more and more lazy every year.  Today I took a step to rectify that and went for a walk on the Parkway and I took my camera and sketchbook of course.

These were very quick and basic sketches, just ten minutes or so each with .9 mechanical pencil.  The idea was just to practice observation and get a feel for the sense of place.  It's easier than ever to take great photographs but cameras aren't experiencing machines, they don't feel.  I feel art should be about the human response to our subjects, not our response to an image captured by a machine.  That said of course I often work from photos, far more often than not.  Part the reason for that is the fact that I still work full time. From November and into March the lack of evening light limits me to only getting out on the weekends and even then the weather often does not cooperate, not to mention I have other interests and often they take up time on the weekends.  I believe a good compromise is to just take out a sketchbook and a pencil and make some direct observations of nature.  Not only is this good drawing practice but it fills your memories with sights, sounds, and smells that just don't come through in a photograph, even if you take that photograph yourself.

All that said about photographs I still take lots of them, (thank heaven for digital cameras!), here are a couple from today's walk.

As you can see while autumn is winding down it's still spectacular.  It was a perfect day for a walk, sunny and 60 degrees.

A Perfect Spring Day for Sketching

It was a beautiful spring day today so I just had to get out and go for a "walk and a sketch" at the Jordan River Parkway.  The leaves are only just barely starting to come in so the trees are still mostly bare, so I took a pencil and a small sketchbook since this would be mostly linear work.

This little scene was right on the bank of the river, there are a million similar scenes all along the river.

This scene wasn't close to the river bank but not on it.  What interested me was the little pathway full of small rocks with the tree background.  There was nowhere for me to sit for this sketch so I did just a quick tonal hatch sketch just to record my impressions of the scene quickly.

There's a small ditch that meanders around this section of the parkway, in fact on one part it's lined with cottonwoods, (hence the name for this section of the parkway, Cottonwood Park). This ditch hardly ever has water in it but a section of it did today, not much but enough to create an interesting lead in to the tree.  I just sat and watched the trickle of shallow water for a few minutes, it was kind of mesmerizing.  Even though I'm studying nature by doing these sketches I've found I often get so involved in the sketch I miss other surroundings.  It's always a good idea to stop and just observe, be in the moment so to speak.

This looks complicated, but I simplified it quite a bit.  These trees with the multitude of trunks always create interesting shapes.  I had one of those "stop and observe" moments while sketching this.  Something landed on my knee, my automatic reflex is to brush the thing off but I looked first this time and noticed it was a lady bug.  I stopped and watched it walk around on my knee for a couple minutes then coaxed it to walk onto my finger and watched it walk up and down my finger until it flew away, A short break from sketching that was worth it.





Offset High Crop

Does that title sound a little cryptic?  It's nothing too mysterious really, it's just the designation for the configuration of the tractor that's the subject of my latest painting;

"Offset High Crop"

14" X 11", Acrylic on panel

Original - $160

This is an old, derelict Farmall tractor I found in Wallsburg, Utah.  This configuration is unusual, in fact I believe this is the only one of this kind I've seen in person.  The front axle is raised to clear certain crops and the engine is offset from center to give better visibility to the operator, at least on one side.

I've been on a tractor kick lately, the last few ten minute sketches have all  been tractors, one of them based on the same reference photo as the painting.

#17, Case

#18, Allis Chalmers

#19, Farmall Offset High Crop

#20, Eimco Power Horse 4WD

#21, Fordson crawler

TMS #12, #13 and #14

I indicated in my last ten minute sketch post that in the future I'll be blogging multiple ten minute sketches in one post from now on, so here we are.

Ten minute sketch #12 is a pen sketch for planning a 24" X 12" painting I'm working on.  I made a measured outline for this sketch to make sure the proportions would be right.  The scene is a mountain landscape, the season is autumn but you can't really tell that from the pen sketch but I've had one two hour session with the painting and it's going well so far so you'll see before too long.

Ten minute sketch #13 is another pen sketch based on a photo I took in a rural area so far North it was very close to the Idaho border. Just a simple sketch of a large oak tree next to a garage, probably not something I'd paint but it was a good sketch exercise. Maybe if I put a barn there instead.....



I switched mediums for ten minute sketch #14.  This time I got the graphite pencils out.  I used this as a preliminary sketch for a small painting.  Small, simple paintings you can paint in an hour or so are good exercises to do now and then as well, I plan on making the painting very soon.  I wanted to use pencils for this sketch because I felt graphite could capture the subtle values and soft shapes of this natural landscape better than pen.  I'm a little rusty with the pencil, I probably should do my ten minute sketches with graphite for a while.

Pencil Sketching Pastime

I passed a pleasant Saturday afternoon last week sketching at Wheeler Farm, one of my favorite sketching haunts.  I kept it simple and stuck with graphite, (pencil) but I picked a pretty complex subject.  The old farm house at Wheeler Farm is a beautiful example of the western United States version of Victorian architecture.  It's not a simple box like most modern dwellings.  This old farm house had many angles and shapes to play with in my sketchbook, it was fun but far from simple and quick!

"Wheeler Farm House"

A Sketchy Black Friday

I've never been one for hunting for Christmas time bargains, in fact for a very long time I've felt the holiday has been way too over-commercialized and it only gets worse every year.  For me the Friday after Thanksgiving is another day off work, (now that's something to be thankful for. <G>).  We have been blessed with milder than normal weather for this time in November which allowed me to get out and do some sketching. I headed to one of my top five favorite sketching spots, Wheeler Farm, a historic farm owned and run by Salt Lake County.  I knew they had liberated the old Dodge truck from the garage and placed it out in the garden so of course I sketched that first.

"Derelict Dodge"

I kept it simple, just graphite pencil in my 9x12 bristol smooth sketchbook.  After a break for some lunch I walked over to the antique machinery building planning on sketching the John Deere they always have on display outside.  I was surprised and excited to see they now have another tractor on display outside of the building, a Moline I believe, so I sketched that one instead, this time in pen and watercolor.

"By the Barn"

There was a lot more foot traffic in the area where this tractor was parked so I got a lot more attention, in fact I gave out more business cards in one sitting than I ever have before.  One person even said he thinks he likes the sketch more than the real thing. I think that is the best compliment an artist can receive, thank you kind sir!  One boy even asked if this particular sketch was for sale, I had to tell him no, not yet for a couple reasons I won't go into here.



An Oldie but a Goodie

Here's a little blast from the past.  I'd made this sketch a year or so ago at Wheeler Farm.  I'd posted it to my old sketching blog but have never shared it in this blog, it's one of my favorites so I figured I post it here too.

"Sketchy Tractor"

Graphite on paper, 7.75" X 11"

Prints Available

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