I’ve pulled these books from my library and they now rest on the table next to my reading/TV chair. The Guptill and Harding books are still the best in my opinion but I like all of these books. Harding has a great book on drawing trees too but I don’t have that one.
So here I am, pencil in hand, drawing stuff. While it feels like a new road for me, I have done some pencil drawing in museums during winter, because many museums don’t like the idea of watercolors being sloshed about near the exhibits. This is when I work with watercolor pencils too, using a water brush. That was back in 2013-2014 though, and mostly I was still trying to figure out how to deal with basic proportions. Light and shade was mostly foreign to me.
I was walking the other day and found some mushrooms on their last legs I did some tiny sketches of them. It was hard because they were old and falling apart. Somehow I related to them (grin). Anyways, the highlight was that I found some milkweed pods and I brought some home with me. This was done in my S&B Epsilon 9×12 sketchbook.
Drawing this was… well… peaceful. I’ve mentioned that I draw slowly regardless of medium. That’s how this kind of drawing is done. Pencil books don’t spend time telling you to draw quickly (grin). The time flew by, however, and I felt refreshed at the end. On to the next page. I hope you find my stumbling around with new media at least casually interesting and that you’ll laugh along with me.
I love watching you explore a new medium — especially pencil! 😉 The pod is lovely. You might enjoy checking out some books on botanical drawing. Most are in watercolor, but I’ve seen some really gorgeous botanical drawings done in graphite.
Glad you’re enjoying it. I feel I’m exposing many of my inabilities with the new medium stuff. At the same time I feel absolutely exhilerated as the art world has gotten MUCH larger for me all of a sudden.
As for botanical drawing books, maybe I’m exposing more than just my inabilities. I’m an absolute art materials and book geek. In spite of being a pen driver, I own hundreds of pencils of all sorts, lots and lots of paints I’ve never used and when I once counted, I had over 300 art books but that was several Amazon years ago (grin). I’ve got a bunch of botanical books, for colored pencil, watercolor pencil, pencil pencil and just plain old watercolor. Have I drawn botanicals? On an occasional one. I do find Sarah Simblet’s book to be the best, though.
Much as I love my fountain pens, pencil drawing takes me back to my childhood and happy times with a yellow 2B.
Pencil is a lot of fun IF you’ve got lots of time. As a sketching tool, however, I find it lacking relative to a fountain pen. This, of course, is in the eye of the beholder and the reasons and expectations for sketching. I use a pencil every day but most of my street sketching is ‘end product’ sketching and a fountain pen line drawing has more impact than a pencil line drawing in my opinion.
But your comment about your childhood made me smile as most of the basis for my views come from the fact that I used a fountain pen all through school and for the decades that followed. I didn’t draw until 10 years ago and it was with a fountain pen. I do need to learn many of the things you pencil drivers learned that can’t be learned while driving a fountain pen.