Monochrome

I played with monochrome in this sketch. It was a Prismacolor green ochre pencil and I like the effect,even if the greenish tint doesn't show well in the scan, its more like sepia. I haven't worked much in underpaintings or grisaille, but this monochrome sketch had me thinking about the process and its advantages.

Of course all graphite pencil, which I mostly use, is monochrome, yet I find it a little odd to use the same process but in a different colour, even if the end result is the same. I guess its like knowing your mashed potatoes are white, not purple. I'm a creature of habit in many ways. I am pushing myself to explore new mediums and look at the world from a different perspective, but I do come back to what is familiar and comfortable to me in art - dry mediums mostly.

I do use watercolours and am will finding time to push out into oils - tomorrow, tomorrow! A pencil however feels most comfortable to me. I like the detail that I can achieve with it and I know inside out how it behaves, what pressure I need to apply for different values and how lead softness affects my image.

Tomorrow it will be oils. I have a lovely little photo taken in Little Harbour East by a friend of mine. This image is calling me and I think it will be my test piece for oils. I haven't used oils seriously for many years but have a pile of old and new tubes of paints waiting my attention in my studio.