29 July 2018

Charcoal extraordinaire

'Twas a lovely day when we went to Blue House Yard 
to collect some special charcoal from Iain Loasby, who manages Rivenwood Coppice and uses the wood to make 18th-century style trellises -
and other woody products such as besom brooms, bean poles, pea sticks, kindling, bbq charcoal, drawing charcoal, thick woody pencils -
These were the sticks, 40-55 cm long, hazel, and looking and sounding like glass when gently hit together; they were uber-charcoal, charcoal extraordinaire -
One stick will probably cover acres of paper, but I couldn't resist having three -
and gave the short, fat one a test drive. It took a while to get started, so that all that happened at first was fairly random marks, but after a while the stick got the hang of being used for drawing -
 Particularly pleasurable to use the end, flat, to quickly cover area -
Yes, charcoal is messy, all that fine dark dust - but SO satisfying!

Addendum  - seen, several weeks later, in the shop at West Dean -

1 comment:

Olga Norris said...

Maybe that's the kind of charcoal Richard Serra uses for his drawings -?