Gettin' Inspired

 

Another video by Jeff Haines. You get to see him drawing here, and it's a joy. I got so excited about it I dug out my old charcoal pencil kit and did a sketch. It looks real nice, but I'm really more of a graphite artist than charcoal. If I were going to use charcoal pencils I'd have to draw really big, and that brings a whole set of logistical problems. I can get very similar effects in a soft enough pencil. I used to draw in the softest pencils I could get, all the way up to 9B, as well as General's Layout pencils, Design Ebony, and Derwent water-solubles. That was in the 90's when I was drawing really dark. I loved it, but it creates a solidity and opaqueness that's very limiting. Right now my favorite drawing tool is the Staedtler 2mm lead holder (has been for many years). I keep some fairly hard lead in it, I think it's HB or maybe 2B. That's soft enough to get really dark if you want to. But I used to be able to get a lot more expressive just using wooden pencils back in the day. I might need to lose the gadgetitis and get back to basics. The wooden 6B used to be my standard, at least in those dark days. More often though it would be the 2B, which allows extreme darkness and also a very delicate light touch. That's the one I used to call the Poetic Pencil, because when I was getting ready to draw I'd always ask myself "2B, or not 2B? That is the question."