A Word about Graphite Crayons!

I love it!
Recently, we made a trip to town to see Mr. Nelson at the gallery (here's Nelson's blog, go pester him and make him post!) and Becky at Artopia. I bought one of these graphite crayons at Becky's suggestion and took it home and fell in love with it! You draw with it and it is water soluble and so I can use the paint brush to make washes and soften lines and all that good arty stuff.
Here's a picture, you can get them at Dick Blick but if you are in the Johnson City area, do yourself a favor and go see Becky and Christine at Artopia!

Anyway, when we got home I couldn't wait to try it and had some of that textured acrylic painting paper, (also bought at Artopia) and went to work playing with the crayon.
Here's what I drew.

A little graphite doom for ya.
The sky background was just lightly hatched in and when water was added I got a nice gray wash there.
The hair on the front figure and other darker areas were drawn more heavily and when water was added it got nice and dark and almost paintlike. I love it.
Now the crayon is a fattie and will have to be sharpened I think. I don't know if Becky has a sharpener for it but if not I can use a pocket knife to sharpen it.
Oh, and here's one where I used the crayon to outline areas and then went back in with watercolor pencils and added color.

I called this one "Particles Penetrate the Bunkers". Thinking of all those folks out there hoping their bunkers will protect them from the doom.
Both pieces were sprayed with workable fixatif I got from...you guessed it! Artopia! And it really brings out the colors and helps protect your work from smudging and evil art ruining stuff like that. I highly recommend it!
Anyway, hope you all have had a nice weekend so far. I'll be back again with updates about more new work.