Pencil Sketching

These next two sketches are both worked with Mars Lumograph HB pencil. 

The burlap looking container (which is actually a flower vase) holding sketching supplies started out with intentions of taking pen and ink plus watercolor but I ended up losing myself in the pencil sketch, shading along the way, and just left as is.  There's just something to the sound and feel of the pencil lead on paper I love.  I could go further with darker pencils to build up the values but I decided to stop where I did.  At least the HB does not smudge like the darker/softer pencils do and I didn't feel like messing with a fixative.  The plus...........I can always return and add darker values, if I choose. 

Worked late last night / early morning hours.


Although our group didn't have a planned outing today, I wanted to go back to Discovery Gardens.  Each time we go, something else is blooming and I'm always finding new things I didn't see before.  I sent an email out to a few regulars to let them know what I was doing and invited them to join me........three came making it a really beautiful relaxed time together :-)

At first we weren't sure if we should attempt it or not as it was forecasted to rain starting morning hours on one weather website and afternoon on another.  It was super cloudy looking like it could rain at any time.  We decided to take our chances and so glad we did.  We sketched from 10:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. and it soon after we left, it started to rain.  GREAT TIMING!!!

The morning was cloudy but pleasant.  Low humidity, no blaring hot sun, and cool.  We were able to sit where the cacti grow since the sun wasn't out to chase us away.  I chose the young cactus,  again only using an HB pencil.