Moleskine and Blackwing Pencil sketch

As the weather warmed up, I began taking my sketchbook and my favourite pencil and doing a quick(ish) drawing each time I walked there. I have drawn outside with all sorts of materials in the past, but time and time again I come back to pencil and paper.

My current combination is a Moleskine sketchbook and Blackwing Matte (formerly Palomino, I think) pencil. They are a match made in heaven – the dark, soft pencil just glides over the smooth off-white paper. I will expand on those materials eventually, but for now, they are all I need to capture the shapes and lines of the trees. I find it an interesting challenge to capture a sense of movement with gestures in this limited space of the relatively small pages. 

Shapes and lines in my sketchbooks

  Each sketch takes me anywhere between twenty minutes and half an hour. Taking my time, I build up values and marks – lots of cross-hatching and dense pencil work.  There are a few fallen trees with mossy cushions that make the perfect stopping points on my walks. I now do a sketch most days that I walk there and my sketchbook is filling up nicely. One thing about the woods – I could go there every day for the rest of my life and still find new shapes and ways to respond to what is in front of me. It is a new discovery but with enough interest to keep me going for years to come.  Do you have a favourite pencil/paper combination?