Day 6, Tulip in Graphite

Not much time today so it's a short post tonight.  Today graphite was the medium of choice. Working again in the small square Sillman & Birn sketchbook, I chose a pale tulip from a bunch of flowers in the house....and added a slightly odd looking bulb too.

Tulip in graphite for day 6 of the challenge. A tonal drawing  on 7 x 7cm Stillman & Birn sketchbook paper, 270 gsm, smooth. Using Faber Castell 9000 series grades 2H - 4B. Sorry for the dark images, the light had gone by the time I got around to photographing this one.

  The paper gives quite a soft finish which I like, but for really sharp drawings I find the Schollershammer 4G is good. Bristol board is an alternative but personally I don't like it's rather cold appearance.

Laying the foundations with a 2H and H pencils

 After sketching the outline very lightly I usually start any tonal drawing by establishing the basic form using continuous tone technique with a fairly hard pencil, being careful not to apply too much pressurem, the weight and motion should come from the arm to get an even tone. I cover pretty much all all but the brightest highlights. The harder grade pencil creates a smooth foundation to build the darker tones on top. Here I worked from light to dark, using progressively softer pencil grades. For this tulip I used 2H, H, HB, B, 2B, 3B and 4B. I sometimes go over grainy looking soft grades with a harder pencil at the end. This smooths it out.

I added this rather odd looking bulb which had some shrivelled old growth and a split skin, which was about to fall off!

I was going to add a few different parts, such as petals and reproductive parts but ran out of time for today. I don't much like the bulb so thought it would look better with more parts added.
It was a good to work with graphite again, it's one of my favourite mediums. Hopefully more in graphite will follow as the challenge progresses.