I’ve been feeling stuck and stagnant lately in much of my life including my art. I sit down to make something, and I just go back to what I’ve been doing and what I’m comfortable with. So, I was excited recently to teach a two-week summer high school art program. I’ve been teaching this program for the last 21 years, and working with a group of skilled and creative high school artists each summer always gets me excited about art and gives me lots of ideas. But this year was a bit different. Instead of using it as a time to draw inspiration from the students and try new things and experiment with new ideas and new materials, I pulled out the tried and true.
I turned to making one of my monsters. I began the by using water-soluble graphite pencil, and then painted water over the marks to blend out the graphite. Once it dried, I layered regular graphite on top. I love the act of shading with graphite, and I’ve been under a lot of stress and anxiety. Turning to something that I know so well, was just a way to calm and ground myself.
But as I sat there shading in the monster, I had an idea. Instead of using water-soluble graphite pencil, what if I could use a graphite paint? Did anything like that exist? I knew that several companies make graphite tinted colors of watercolor paint. But was there simply a graphite that I could paint with that had no additional color? That’s when I found Kuretake Fluid Graphite.
I just got it, so I haven’t done much with it. But this high-viscosity fluid graphite definitely has potential. I experimented a bit in my journal as I played around with how much water to use, and then I turned to using some mixed media paper. Like I said, I didn’t do much with it, but I’m excited to use it for my monsters and for my mixed media work.
Have you discovered any new materials lately? Let us know in the comments.
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Happy Creating!
Eric
Good luck with your liquid graphite. I hope this new medium will help make that stuck feeling go away.