4th Entry for Dec 8, 2011

These are a 15-minute  study above, and two 20-minute ones of K -   below.
All are done with Nobel hard compressed charcoal on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Sketch paper.

I do have a tendency to get brief crushes on new materials if they show promise. During that time a part of me thinks "maybe this is the `magic bullet' material that will perfectly realise my desired shading and mark-making.  At that point I'm only noticing the things that the material does that I like. Gradually I begin to notice where the limitations of a given drawing material or paper are.

A component of how one handles a material or paper is familiarity. I find it takes time to achieve the muscle memory of just what touch and pressure works best with any given combination, and it is only after some practice that I can have the trust to work most freely with a chosen combination of paper and drawing materials.  I've probably drawn upwards of ten thousand studies on newsprint sheets in my life, so it is very much a known quantity. When I find a paper or drawing material with potential, I try to give myself a stretch of time without judgment, just seeing how it behaves, to resist the temptation to think while working, "Is this working really well? How about now? And now?'.  Unless I don't like the feel or texture at all, it's worth doing a hundred or two studies, and then seeing how it worked out.
Over the last year, I've been working through a number of different possibilities. I suspect that, barring some magic material, it is in the combination of a couple of materials that a given paper's potential can be best exploited.

In 2009, virtually everything posted here was Conte crayon on newsprint.
In 2010, I started exploring Japanese paper and generic cartridge paper, with super-soft graphite, and Prismacolor drawing sticks
This year, the papers tried have been: more Japanese papers,  Canson Sketch, generic bond paper, a roll of Strathmore 300 series acid free paper, and Maidstone 90 lb acid-free paper, plus a few odds and ends of other Canson papers.
Materials tried have been- U-Art woodless charcoal sticks,
Royal `super black' sketching sticks,  Nobel woodless charcoal sticks, Progresso woodless pencil crayon, willow charcoal and powdered charcoal.