Hi all,

A friend told me about this site and I very excited to be here. I love the philosophy and the obvious brotherhood here.

Here is a little bit about me: My name is Micah, I’m a forty-something self-taught professional artist, I mainly do acrylic paintings, my best friend is my dog Zoe, I work out of my sister’s art gallery… hum, I write a little, I want to start sculpting but haven’t had the nerve yet. (A year ago I bought a nice block of soapstone that is STILL a nice block of soapstone) AND I draw way too much on the computer these days.

Sometime I would like to share a technique that I learned in the only formal art class I’ve ever had. It was a class on medical illustration. The subject matter was pretty boring but there was a fascinating technique (I don’t remember what it is called) were you use a dry brush and paint with the dust of pencil lead. I’ve never seen this technique mentioned anywhere else. Maybe some of you know what I’m talking about? At any rate, I think it would fit right here.

Micah

Welcome to Drawspace Micah. Great to see you here. I'm sure you have a lot to share with others.

The application you're talking about is used with charcoal powder as well as graphite powder. You can apply it with a brush, a cloth or your fingers and it gives a wonderful background or soft shading. But very very very messy! Never sneeze when you're using it....

Welcome to Drawspace, Micah. I have never tried the technique you are referring to but it definately sounds interesting. You have to share it and show us a work in progress maybe? I hope you enjoy the site. Everyone here is awesome and you couldn't ask for better friends.

Yay! Welcome Micah!

I'm pretty new myself but already I've had a warm welcome.

Hopefully you can teach us lesser artists a thing or too.

For those considering using Micah's tip, here's a couple of suggestions I'd like to add from experience:

Use a high sided container that you can tap your brush against to dump the excess graphite (otherwise it can collect on your work more easily and can lead to nasty smudges).

Recently my local art shop has started stocking woodless graphite (sooo wonderful to work with - broad strokes!!!) BUT, before they stocked them, I had to use normal pencils. To do this I used to buy three grades of pencil - B, 3B and 6B. I carefully sliced down the wooden casing with my XActo knife and then just sanded the core into three seperate pots - I just used those plastic canisters that 35mm film used to come in.

I see others have used this method. I’ll see if I can put together a short “how to” for those unfamiliar. It is fairly messy but I think it’s worth the trouble.

Sickfish there are no “lesser” artists - only people with different styles. I’ve already seen work here that looks more realistic than what I do, plus there are LOTS of people here that are better at portraits than I am! I give the credit for my career as an artist to my sister. She is quite the salesperson. Many artists (myself included) are not that great with the business end of art. I consider myself lucky that my sister is talented in that area.

Micah

I guess that's true - it's been a long time since I did any serious art so I consider myself to be incredibly rusty - especially when I compare my work to some of the amazing stuff here and on other sites (wow - conceptart.org!!!).

I guess I'll always be a lesser artist if I don't draw more though!