I was in Hobby Lobby looking for an HB Carbon Pencil, just like my teacher Norman Battershill uses. They had only B Carbon, but lots of graphite and charcoal pencils. So I bought an HB charcoal. Blacker than soot. I guess it is soot. They also had a lot of pastel pencils. And they had the old square-stick Conte' Crayons. They are like pastels, but quite a bit harder, so they don't smudge much. They are the stuff of da Vinci's drawings, with the cool names: Sanguine, Bistre, Sepia, plus black and white. I had a few years ago and liked them. But I drew big, swinging my arm at the elbow on full sheets of newsprint. I thought maybe it was time again. Now they are calling them Conte' Pastels. Thinking the Pastel Pencils were the same, I bought some, hoping to swing on a smaller scale.
Alas, they were the true, smudgy Pastels. I uncrinkled the plastic wrap they came in, re-glued the cardboard to it with the pencils inside, planning on returning them with only a line or two taken out of them. But waiting in the store for Mom after I paid for them, I couldn't wait and tried them out--on the back of their cardboard packaging. So--
they could lend themselves to a "smudgy" kind of a style. seems fussy for my tastes as well. sketching should be simple, right?
ReplyDeleteI was in Hobby Lobby looking for an HB Carbon Pencil, just like my teacher Norman Battershill uses. They had only B Carbon, but lots of graphite and charcoal pencils. So I bought an HB charcoal. Blacker than soot. I guess it is soot. They also had a lot of pastel pencils. And they had the old square-stick Conte' Crayons. They are like pastels, but quite a bit harder, so they don't smudge much. They are the stuff of da Vinci's drawings, with the cool names: Sanguine, Bistre, Sepia, plus black and white. I had a few years ago and liked them. But I drew big, swinging my arm at the elbow on full sheets of newsprint. I thought maybe it was time again. Now they are calling them Conte' Pastels. Thinking the Pastel Pencils were the same, I bought some, hoping to swing on a smaller scale.
ReplyDeleteAlas, they were the true, smudgy Pastels. I uncrinkled the plastic wrap they came in, re-glued the cardboard to it with the pencils inside, planning on returning them with only a line or two taken out of them. But waiting in the store for Mom after I paid for them, I couldn't wait and tried them out--on the back of their cardboard packaging. So--
I'll keep them. See what I can make them do.