Found a new toy today in a store, a water soluble pencil. I think I actually had one of those once, but I never really used it. I bought two, a 2B and a 4B, and played around a bit. I like the way the water smoothes out the graphite without rubbing out the lines completely. You can keep working on top of the washed surfaces with more graphite, getting much darker traces.
For those of you living in countries where poinsettia is more like a bush or a tree – in Sweden we buy them in December, in a pot, and every Swede get all Christmassy inside when these turn up in windows everywhere. People don´t usually keep them longer than a few weeks or until the red has disappeared – poinsettias do not fancy our climate, so the red leaves don´t come back.
17 x 18 cm, Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth “GIOCONDA” Aquarelle pencils and watercolours on Fabriano Rosapina paper (sketchbook page).