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Mid-spring we had a few nights away. It was off-season and the lakeside resort was a tranquil retreat. Great view, lots of walking and good food!
I'd taken along a sketchbook and the most basic kit.
A water brush, ballpoint gel pen in black, and two water soluble Derwent brand pencils. Inktense in Ink Black and a Graphitone grey in medium wash. That was it. But on one of our many walks I gathered some dried plants. (I should add the Ponderosa Pine was already on the roadway. I didn't tear it off the tree.)
I felt drawn to try and print these. So needs must, as the old British saying goes. I had the two water soluble pencils and some leftover coffee!
The only loose paper available was a tiny notepad. I took everything outside to the equally tiny balcony table. Submerging the plants in the coffee was a so-so success. Gave a bit of background colour but no definition. However, rubbing the grass heads with one of the pencils worked great!
Using the brush, I daubed the "inked" up seed head with a bit of water, pressed the ink-side down on the notepaper and covered with another piece of paper. Some judicious rubbing with a finger and there was a half-decent print. Alternating the grey and black pencils allowed for a bit of depth in the print.
When I got home, where I had more supplies, I used a grey stamp pad to ink up the leafy sage.
I also dug out a chunky Lyra brand water-soluble graphite pencil. This worked great, offering up a rich, dark grey.
I don't know if you can tell by the photo below but rubbing the coloured pencils over the dried grasses really barked up the nibs. The Lyra graphite, on the other hand, is so robust and yields a ton of colour. The plan for further weekend jaunts is to toss a few of them in with my sketchbook. They come in varying degrees of intensity -- I've got a 2B, 6B and 9B, the one I used here.
A few twigs and leaves were the subject for a daily sketch and, again, I also used the graphite pencil for shading. The whitish areas in the photo below were done with natural clay picked up on one of our many holiday walks.
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On a little aside, I do wonder if some other artist had also sat out on that tiny third-floor balcony, sketching or making something. Right at my chair, there lay a single stalk of dried grass. It was a bigger plume-y grass, not one of mine. And, unless a bird dropped it, the only way it got there was at the hand of a guest. So as a souvenir, I inked it up and printed it in my sketchbook.
