Drawing in Sicily

In my studio, before the trip, I indulging in one of my life's pleasures, putting together art supplies for travel. This is a tiny kit of hard pastels, about the size of my phone, from a box of NuPastels I've had (I kid you not) since high school. I used to sketch with compressed charcoal a lot, but lately it's been pen and watercolor, and I thought maybe it was time for a change. Pastels, of course, are one of my studio mediums of choice. After doing some Conté sketching in Mexico City last year, I wanted to expand on that. It was a surprise to be able to get thirty colors into this little box, including Conte in black and sanguine, and a soft graphite pencil. dithered about the paper, though, and finally packed a delicious hemp-and-rag handmade paper block from the Montreal paper-maker, St-Armand. I added a package of hand-cleansing wipes, and a mini-can of hairspray to use as fixative.

I did a few test sketches at the studio. The paper seemed a bit too soft, but I convinced myself it would work, maybe even force me to be looser.

So, one of our first evenings in Palermo, I sat down with the new kit and did this sketch of the artichokes we planned to eat for dinner. No problem with the graphite, but when I began to work with the pastels I found, to my dismay, that the lovely paper in my sketchbook was just too soft. The hard pastels kept tearing up little bits of fiber if I pressed hard enough to leave strong marks, or else they skipped over the surface if I applied too little pressure.

After an hour of struggling, I realized I would have to abandon my idea and just use ink or pencil for the rest of the trip. Looking sadly at all the beautiful colors in my box, I realized I had been seduced by the handmade sketchbook paper, but I had been wrong. I did discover that I really liked having a toned background, rather than white or cream, and it encouraged me to see the values of the subjects differently, and to experiment, so all was not lost! And the artichokes were delicious.