Sketch Awesome Project 1

Project 1 – Water-soluble graphite pencil

And here we go. The Project 1 has been released and it is all about water-soluble graphite. I must say, I own a few of those pencils but never used them. Shame to admit, but I had not even tried them out prior to this class, so I was quite happy that their 15 minutes of fame finally arrived.

This week project was split into three different parts:

Part 1 – Warm Up and Pepper

Part 1 was about 22 minutes long and its focus was on simple exercises to get to use the medium. We sketched some cubes and activated graphite in various ways to give us various effects. Then we progressed to a sketch of a pepper. All needed reference photos were included in the download section.

Part 2 – Bunch of Radishes

Part 2 was about 21 minutes long. This was the main project for this week. We sketched a bunch of radishes with a water-soluble graphite pencil, and we put a light watercolour wash over it as well. Leaves were a little tricky as I wanted to include every single one and simplifying is not my strong suit. Also, for some reason, I almost always manage to lose highlights, so I need to be more careful next time.

Part 3 – Bonus: Apple

Part 3 included an optional exercise of a green apple and the video was less than 5 minutes long. We had a choice to sketch whatever we wanted or to sketch what Phil was sketching. I like the idea of graphite activated sketches, but even dark graphite was not dark enough so I grabbed my Stabilo All 8046 Aquarellable pencil to sketch my apple. Stabilo gave me incredible dark black marks and little of the pigment went a long way. I was more cautious about protecting the highlights this time and managed to preserve them. Very happy with my high contrast sketch.

This week summary

• a nice introduction to sketching 
• was able to use graphite pencils I wouldn’t have used otherwise
• liking the larger format of sketching journal
• liking very much writing notes all over
• make me want to sketch more
• learning a lot already
• graphite has a funny sheen and it is hard to take a picture
• finding that Aquafine travel set watercolours are not something I would want to use again