When I came to sketching I’d been using fountain pens for all of my writing for decades. It never occurred to me to use anything different to draw stuff. So I’ve spent years using fountain pens for sketching and rarely have I tried anything else, though I’ve spent a bunch of time with watercolor pencils in museums when watercolors weren’t allowed. But with the COVID scurge going on I’m doing more experiments. I’m not sure why, but I think it has to do with me doing more art in isolation rather than going out with friends to sketch some location.
I was at an Artistes dans les parcs event last week. Even here I’m mostly by myself because the language barrier prevents a lot of interaction between myself and the rest of the participants. Anyways, I was out on the shore of the St. Lawrence River sizing up some rocks to draw. For whatever reason I got the idea to draw them with a pencil. I dug around in my bag and came up with a short hunk of Blackwing 602. Here’s the result. Another result of this experiment is the realization that I’ve never learned how to draw with a simple, graphite pencil.