Above: No this isn't a pigeon, this is my first sketch on my first trip to this year's Minnesota State Fair. I walked into the Swine barn at 10:52 a.m. (running late) and met this pig, who was napping, but kept opening his eye and twirling his ears around, listening to all the barn sounds. A 9 x 7 inch, 300 lb. hot press Fabriano Artistico journal card, with Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer Watercolor Pencils used dry. I was just getting used to this card size and these pencils on this paper. I wasn't really interested in drawing the pen as the light strokes there suggest, but the pig looked like it was floating, without that. I miss my definitive ink lines, but I pushed forward because I love experiements and a challange. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Yesterday I did make it to the Fair to test out my new selection of materials. As mentioned in the caption above, I decided this year to go with pencils and not use pens for sketching. This still seems very odd to me, but after the above warm up sketch, I had some good moments. The main difficulty for me is that at 9 x 7 the card size is a bit too large for me when working with pencil. I need to fill up the space quickly and the pencil doesn't do that, the way I use pencils. We'll see, as we move into other visits I may come to love these cards.