Developing the graphite travel lines

Wetting the paper before writing with soluble graphite (on gessoed bristol board)

Paper prepared with a wash of grey-green acrylic paint

Taking apart a book published in 1738 - sacrilege?

The bookpages gessoed and written on

Single pages treated with pva (left); the other three are gesso, with writing in various materials

Leftover paint on brown bags - too colourful, at the moment anyway

Lots of water versus no water

Gessoed till receipts, with felt tip, gold pencil, biro, water and graphite, pencil

Fine sand added to gesso; when written on and put into the sketchbook to dry, it made a sandy offset print

More graphite travel lines

The first water-drawing on paper prepared with water-soluble graphite. I'm using 6B and this is grainy paper. The slight change in angle of the paper shows how "slippery" these are to photograph -

Haste and inattention during a change of trains left a disfiguring blob; vigorous application of the eraser left a dull greyness -

Below is graphite on bristol board (v.smooth), held parallel to the window so the light reflects ... you lose the shine in the photo, but do see the lines -

 Same piece, same situation, after erasure - the borders are what was left of the graphite after the masking tape was removed -

 I wonder if careful work with the eraser would make it look more interesting ... or is this idea a dead end? It's certainly a lot of work for very little effect -

The next one is virgin bristol board written on with the graphite stick, then re-traced with the water brush - a "there and back" journey -

Not very interesting, imho.

After watching a couple of videos on using water soluble graphite (here and here) I tried "...into wet" - make a puddle of water, eg when stopped at a station, then write through it till the next station; repeat as needed; no words -

That's a sample ... ripe for road testing. Nice fuzzy line, and the possibility of puddles, what's not to like?

Getting simplified, and with a "better" aesthetic.