Midweek notes no.35

the humble pencil

Dear Friends,

September, so soon you dash by. This is the last midweek notes for the month! The sun is shining, and has been for the past several days, but nights are chilly. Evenings are now all about quiet reading and mornings are for the same. But also drawing - I always have several drawings on the go. Often, I will leave a drawing ‘set up’ on my small work table so that in the morning I can work on it, if only for ten minutes whilst I drink my tea.

Let me share with you several drawings from past years and some brief notes on the history of the humble pencil….

photo: Night of Owl Poems - a recent pencil drawing (currently available).

I work on drawings gradually, usually with no clear plan, sometimes a theme, often a spark of an idea - can I draw that? Will that work?

At school, the early years of primary school, we had shared pencils that were kept in a big pot. Teachers would inspect pencils for teeth marks, gnawing was strictly forbidden. You were warned about ‘lead poisoning’. For years I wondered when pencils stopped being made of lead. Turns out they were never made of lead. The paint might have been, though!

The lead in a pencil is simply the term given to the fine stick of graphite within. All that talk of being poisoned was just a scare story and I feel slightly disappointed about that, for some reason. As a child I was fascinated by the idea of poisons - things you should not pick, put near your mouth, bottles not to be opened. I once told another child that puddles with rainbows in them were full of poison - which was not incorrect. Childhood and telling tales is something I have never really grown away from.

photo: moleskine sketchbook pages from 2011 - here I have used soft pencils for a dream-like quality

Graphite, a soft, crystalline form of carbon, has been used in drawings for many, many years. In the first half of the 16th century, a rich seam of graphite was found in Cumbria (England). This was mined and used to make drawing tools wrapped in twine. The graphite was also used to mark sheep.

Though we think today pencils are inexpensive, graphite was once a highly sought after material, used in the manufacture of arms (muskets and canons). It would be traded and smuggled out of the country. Over time it was discovered that mixing graphite with clay would make a good alternative to using sticks of pure graphite. And so we have the range of pencils we do today - the more clay mixed with graphite, the harder the pencil.

I start most of my drawings with either a 2B or a B pencil, depending on the paper I am working on. From there I will switch about between anything from a B to a 6B.

photo: Summer Storms - a drawing from 2015 (hard to believe I made this one ten years ago - I remember it so well

photo: another favourite from the past - young musicians (2018)

Many of my drawings are inspired by paintings and prints from earlier times, images found in older churches and illustrations from early books. I look to the Pre-Raphaelites and William Blake.

Why do I choose to use a pencil and not another tool to draw? There are times when I enjoy the soft, almost hesitant quality of a pencil. Graphite has a different voice to ink - it sings in a low, gentle key and depends on a certain amount of contrast. A pencil drawing does require time - or at least my drawings do - so they give me the opportunity to become absorbed by a growing relationship with the image as it develops. I don’t look to any specific artist to show me how to draw, but prefer to consider how my style has developed in its own way, over the years.

photo: a drawing from 2014

Many of my drawings have been inspired by my embroidery work - and vice versa. They really are sisters to each other. Without hours spent drawing with a pencil, I would not be able to draw so fluidly using my sewing machine. And drawing on my sewing machine, so many tiny faces and stitches, has no doubt helped my drawing dexterity.

photo: a moleskine sketchbook from 2024

photo: a moleskine drawing from 2009 - I titled this one ‘penance’ - and looking back I have no memory of this one, but think possibly I had been reading a history book - the figure here seems kept within a mystery - and though I don’t think of it as a great drawing I like the mark making - ghostliness.

photo: a drawing titled ‘the maid loves the child’ from 2021 - a charming drawing with no apologies - it wants to be what it is: humble, an escape into an imagined past.

I hope you have enjoyed this look back on some of the many pencil drawings I have made over the years. I’ve kept to the simplest works - those that use just a graphite pencil without colour. But I will share one last drawing that has a hint of something more -

photo: moleskine sketchbook - pencil portraits with a hint of red - from 2010

Again, it is interesting to think I made this drawing fifteen years ago - yet I do remember how I made several like this with just a hint of red coloured pencil to give a lively touch. I am thinking now I might just make a few new drawings with this in mind.

I am inspired to draw - so will close this post by thanking you always for reading. I hope you may enjoy any drawing you might do. Please also let me know if there are any subjects/stories/ideas for drawings you might like to see me explore in the future.

I look forward to share more with you soon, until then

take care

Cathy x