‘The Voyager’ by Tessa Farmer, one of several sculptures temporarily in Bath Abbey. This one’s in a small side chapel, with a collection of ants, wasps and tiny winged figures riding on its back. It’s also carrying a dead mouse on its feet. The pencil drawing took about 30 minutes so I got to see many other visitors’ reactions, ranging from fascination to disgust, via confusion and amusement.
Another enjoyable experience with pencil, where the potential for soft lines suited the subject. After a while I found it hard to darken the shadows as the paper wouldn’t take any more graphite. I added the blue background wash at home.
2H pencil, Windsor and Newton ink, A4
Mostly drawing 
Here I was expecting pictures of Swanage in Dorset? I remember that to swanage a glossop was to subtly wipe up a guest’s spill at a dinner party according to the Book of Liff by Douglas Adams. Interesting your comments on pencil. Having ‘trained’ more traditionally I always worked in pencil for observational drawing and made the switch to pen when I began to cartoon more. I feel the need to work in ‘softer’ media but pen is very neat. Love to use charcoal but not so sure about the mess especially in sketch books – it’s not the mess on the page it’s the carried over mess on other ‘clean’ pages. Maybe I need a messy sketchbook?
Hi Mark, a misleading title, but there aren’t many swan related puns around. Did you enjoy the musical link? And the Meaning of Liff is an old favourite that I’ll now have to dig out.
2H pencil is about as messy as I can stand, especially in a portable kit. But a home based messy sketchbook makes sense… Ed