Want to know why I love sketching with charcoal pencil? When I sketch, my pencil glides across the page. It makes the hairs on my back stand still. The roughness of the lines reminds me of the way grains of sand form clumps when I squeeze them between the toes of my feet in the afternoon sun. I inhale the beautiful scent of freshly sharpened pencil wood.
The shine of the lead, its glitter, brings drawings to life. When I get stumped on a part of a sketch, I start to notice little pores in the paper that break up my lines across the page. When I smear the charcoal to shade my sketch, the charcoal flows under my fingertips in a soft powder covering everything I touch with a snow of silver gray. Sketching with charcoal pencil lets me start ripples as smoothly as ocean waves.
When I sketch with charcoal pencil, I can focus on drawing the world around me. It becomes a simultaneous experience of losing track of time but also being able to notice little details of day to day life that I would otherwise have missed without bating an eye.
Noticing little moments of simple beauty in the world around us is why I love drawing with charcoal pencil. What do you love doing? Take more time to do it, or try something new that excites you. Notice the things, the places, and especially the people around you. Cherish every moment, as every moment can fade away as quickly as the most detailed charcoal pencil drawing in a flurry of rain.
Photos above by Tim Wright and Inge Maria on Unsplash