Added 1 new A* page:A couple sketches from a little while ago in the sketchbook:
I was trying out a Conté pencil that I'd spotted at the local art supply store:
I had no idea what it was, really, only that it was black and something to draw with; turns out that Conté is a clay-based medium, embedded with graphite or charcoal for the black color--this French dude, Conté, came up with it in 1795 as a cheap alternative to pure graphite pencils, which had to be imported from the world's only graphite mine in England, and at the time the English had a naval blockade around France. I got it in wood-encased pencil form, but you usually hear about it in non-encased "crayon" (which may have wax rather than clay, possibly) form.
This black Conté pencil is incredibly dark! Puts any graphite pencil to shame by a good ways in terms of how dark a mark it makes. It helps that the Conté stuff isn't reflective like graphite is; it's totally matte and just looks like...well, like a black hole I guess. So black! It is also very soft--it *does* almost feel clay-like--so it doesn't really do small detail, really picks up the texture of the paper or whatever you're drawing on, and it doesn't erase very well. But if you wanted to have a pencil-type thing that made as dark a mark as possible, you could do worse.
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