Drawing 2: Back at the Board

After a long visit with my friends Paint Brush and Paint Roller, I happily returned to the drawing board this afternoon and reacquainted myself with my pencils. I always have a moment of trepidation after a longish time away from drawing - there's a sense of wondering if it'll work out like it did last time. It didn't seem to take long to get past that though, and I made a good start on the second drawing in the series.

I've altered the composition to remove the grease fitting on the top most connection point. It was too directional and gave me a sense that the drawing was upside down, which it is, but I don't want that to be the impression of the viewer. The rendering here at the start involves a set of layers that will build up the flat area across the top. It's a challenge to make a basically smooth flat surface interesting, yet if one looks closely there's plenty of texture on the surface to work with; it's just subtle.

Here's the first snapshot of the work in progress. I'm laying down the second layer of detail using a 2H pencil. The first layer was laid down with a 5H - the hardest pencil I work with these days. The harder the pencil the lighter the mark it makes.