Graphite and Granulation - December 11, 2019

When I was at BYU back in the early 90's, there was an instructor named Hagen Haltern who made the most beautiful drawings/paintings with graphite. He made beautiful washes with alcohol that looked like rippled stone or... I'm not sure.

The desire to paint with graphite was finally within my grasp when I found liquid pencil on Blick! I couldn't believe it was on the website the day I saw it and clicked "order". It wasn't a surprise to me that I immediately got an email that it was on backorder. They sent me an email saying "it's on backorder" for a few months. Then, one day, I was checking my bank account (as one should do) and say that Blick had charged me something - and I hadn't bought anything (recently). It happened to be for the amount of the liquid pencil. There had to be a mistake! But it wasn't a mistake. It made it to me and I LOVE IT.

There are 12 tubes, 6 colors each of permanent and re-wettable. Of course, I tried the re-wettable first. Look at that granulation!  

More granulation. It practically paints itself -  Each of the little houses can't help but have infinite variety since the graphite is so unpredictable. I LOVE THAT!!!!

Here are two test strips. The left is pure water in a wash. The right has some flicks of alcohol. Alcohol doesn't work well with watercolor paper (at least, not Arches) - it sinks in and totally removes the sizing and gets weird. UNLESS you do it just right (in other words, have good luck) and it simply makes a beautiful ripple-mark... I think Yupo would do better, but we'll see.

One more closeup of the granulation because that just makes me so happy. And look at the blue  in the roofs!!! It's so beautiful! (I wonder what it would be like to have skin that color. I'd be so pretty I wouldn't be able to tear myself away from a mirror probably.)

I'll work on this again later. I'm still so tired every night. This tooth thing is creeping me out. (And my family member contacted me today- "be strong, self!"