A small group of Seattle Urban Sketchers met yesterday at the Frye Art Museum to participate in the 46th World Wide Sketchcrawl. Because only graphite or colored pencils are allowed in the museum, I brought along an old-fashioned mechanical lead holder equipped with a 4B lead.

Switching from a fountain pen to a graphite pencil forced me to adjust my usual approach. Graphite pencils respond to pressure much more readily than an ink pen and encourage the use of tonal values. So the process I used was to first sketch the structure out lightly and then hatch broad areas of gray. I then wend back and darkened selected portions to achieve the desired gradation and contrast. Each of these sketches took about 30 minutes to complete.