Nifty Journal – Fun with Graphite – Day 1

Today’s book: Nifty (A Coloring Journal)

Colored with: Mitsubishi Hi-Uni graphite pencil (10b hardness)
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From this morning’s Facebook post:

Good morning everyone!

My sketchbook work tends to go through cycles. Sometimes everything is drawn with neat, smooth lines and coloring sized spaces. Other times the lines are super sketchy and there’s no open spaces. Right now, though, my recent pages are all full of odd little small, complex shapes with lots and lots of graphite pencil shading so I can see how various shapes look when shadowed in a way to give them three dimensional form.

Of course, that makes me want to color in some of my book designs with graphite too. And each time I settle into a one of my graphite shading cycles, I notice how my pencil hand and concentration are ever changing. Acceptance and forgiveness changes too. My current page of sketchbook shapes has a lot in common with a page that I remember drawing almost 30 years ago – a page from the days where I threw out all of my sketches rather than saving any of them. Sure, there are some differences in drawing style and experience from that page, but the biggest change is in no longer having any sorts of judging or doubting feelings while I sketch. (Usually, lol.) It’s just relaxing drawing and sooner or later something really cool will pop out – so no need to put a lot of expectations on the line of the moment.

It was only two years ago that I started a graphite coloring page and stalled out about 1/4 of the way through – getting caught up in judging each little shape as I colored. Even though I was very comfortable with marker coloring, there were other ways to color where I hadn’t yet developed the “ahh – don’t worry, all of the messy bits usually sort themselves out eventually” attitude. A revisit to graphite coloring gives a little measure of how much I’ve chilled out. And I’m pretty sure there will be another graphite coloring somewhere down the road that I compare with this one that will probably reveal a whole new set of changes in acceptance and awareness.

Have a lovely coloring Thursday!