Prompted by my posting of my parakeet studies, I remembered this session but couldn’t find it here. Not sure why these bird studies from November 2019 were never added, I guess they fell through the cracks because they are a really rare thing from me: pencil drawing. I have a complicated history with pencil because of some really bad teaching as a baby artist which made me associate pencil work with homework and not being able to draw.
Whereas partly it’s my natural style, which doesn’t have definite confident Raphael-like lines that were in vogue with my teachers, and partly because pencil allows me to erase, redraw, erase and create very fuzzy multiple lines. But it worked for Alberto Giacometti, so I don’t know why I was attacked for it at school!
Bird Studies #2, Stabilo All and waterbrush pen, A4 sketchbook. 
Bird Studies #1, Stabilo All and waterbrush pen, A4 sketchbook.
Anyway being me these aren’t normal pencils, they are Stabilo All pencils, closer to either a Woody’s Pencil or a water-soluble chinagraph. This is a reminder that I need to revisit this medium, it’s fallen off the radar since I’m not doing life or portrait drawing anymore due to the lockdown.
This set, drawn over a day are of moving birds in Kingston – hence the piece below where I am trying to capture birds in flight. But actually, my pencil drawing is not bad! I still have the residual shame after all these decades, probably a big reason why they were posted on my Instagram then stuffed away. Nothing will destroy young artists faster than art education…unless done properly and that’s really rare, it’s really damaging to the creative psyche.
I did do some pen pieces with fine-liner, waterbrush pen and Molotow marker – it’s dated by the fact I am using a fine-liner – probably a Staedtler or a Pigma Micron and that I originally described the Kuretake and Pentel Aquash waterbrush pens as ‘brush pens’. I obviously hadn’t gotten the Pentel and Kuretake ink brush pens yet.
Bird Studies #6, Indian Ink in Fineliner 0.8mm Marker, Kuretake/Pentel Brush Pens and Molotow White One4All pen, A4 sketchbook. 
Bird Studies #7, Indian Ink in Fineliner 0.8mm Marker, Kuretake/Pentel Brush Pens and Molotow White One4All pen, A4 sketchbook.
And I stopped using fineliners as I was increasingly disgusted at the idea of single-use plastic. Pens that can’t be refilled are extremely wasteful, hence fountain pens and refillable markers. I still have a load of them, I probably should use them up before they go off, but I just feel that they are a bad influence.
I haven’t done it here, but I tend to also overdraw and scribble too much with fine-liners – partly the same as the pencil drawing issue – and fountain and dip-pens slow me down. They force me to be more confident and definite – ironically what my art teachers wanted. That doesn’t mean my pencil drawings are ‘wrong’ though. I have experimented with intentionally over-drawing to try and exorcise these ghosts, but it’s hard programmed.
Still I think these drawings are really good and I need to do more study trips like this, and get back to some of the mediums I have stopped using, like Woody pencils and Stabilo All. Partly because I suspect I might have to go cold-turkey and have a personal lockdown in the near future re: spending and use the things I have stored away. Already in progress actually – this is why the water-soluble crayons are re-appearing in the Mynktober challenge.
And who knows, maybe I could eventually reclaim pencil drawing from the mass grave of GCSE and A-Level someday?
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