All Hail the mighty PENCIL and all things graphite.

Denise:  I've seen those sketchbooks with brightly coloured pages, but I'd largely dismissed  them as not being suitable.  In fact, the bright red works very well with your excellent drawing.  Maybe time for a  rethink. Paul's great sketchbook drawings lead me on to what I was going to say.  Probably I'll be preaching to the converted...but here goes.  I have my own lexicon for my drawings.  First there's scribble sketching.  It's exactly that.  Scribble.  I rarely show them, but I'm doing it all the time, searching for ideas, how I'm going to represent this and that.  Usually they are binned. Then there's what I term as Doodling, I give these much more than the scribble.  Sometimes they are ideas to be further developed, but, if I'm honest, I'm quite happy doodling away in my sketchbooks.  Sometimes I think I'd be quite contented sticking with doodling, and taking my drawing no further than that. But we all have the urge to do better, so the last style is the full monte where I try to draw as well as I'm able.  This doesn't always work, and is the area where I suffer the most disappointment.  Often I think my doodles are better.  I'm not expecting much from doodles, so it's easier to be more content with them.  But striving to do better is the thing, not merely the result.  After all it's only a drawing, and there's always the next one. This is a SCRIBBLE, I was roughing out the layout for a painting... ...as is often the case, the end result is different.  Here's the finished picture... ...you'll see I largely used ideas obtained from the scribble.  (I think I've shown this scribble before, I've used it here because I simply don't keep my 'scribble' stage drawings.) Here's my doodle stage.  I've a large quantity of these, because it's the most enjoyable way to draw for me.  The hope is they provide ideas for more worked pictures...sometimes they do...but mostly I sit down and do another doodle. These are from various sketchbooks... Often, when I expect to be stuck in some Hospital waiting room, I'll take an A5 sketchbook, a mechanical pencil, and doodle... These days I mostly draw my finished work with colour-pencils or pen and ink, so I don't have many  pencil or charcoal drawings.  This was done with HB, 2B and 4B pencils, it's my idea of how Dickens Mr Pickwick might look... That's enough of that. A kindred spirit in the sketching area is Alan.  From what he says I know these were done en plein air and rapidly... ...both in charcoal.  You don't get this good at sketching unless you keep at it.  They're visual notes.   So,  in my vernacular, we have many 'doodler's' here on POL.  Keep at it folks. A few more drawings... A fabulous charcoal and pencil drawing by Russell. A pencil drawing by an artist named AMIT.  A pencil drawing by Martin Mulhern, here on POL. A charcoal drawing by Josh Hernandez.

Good drawings from Jenny and George.  Jenny:  The paper I use for drawing is Heavyweight Cartridge and the smoother version of cold-pressed watercolour paper which has some tooth, but not too much.  I also like the hot-pressed watercolour paper which is smoother still, but you said you don't like too smooth a paper.

An artist I like is Carter Goodrich, in particular his pencil drawings.  He's also a  cartoonist. He also designs characters for animated movies.  There's been a series of 'Despicable Me' movies, Carter designed the characters for that... I've mentioned Laurie Lipton before, she makes VAST wall sized pencil drawings with a surreal, often macabre edge... You find odd, and very clever drawings... ...I like this very much.  Annoyingly, no artist given. I mentioned above 'scribble' drawings, we all make them.  But there's another kind of scribble drawing that's very different, some artists use the scribble technique to produce their finished art.  Vince Low is one, here's some of his work... ...a closer look... I particularly like this one... A few more artists here on POL... Gunrun's line drawing. A selfie in  pencil from Fionna. Thea Penna pencil drawing.

Thanks for pinning that one down for me Hilary, it’s frustrating when websites don’t name the artist.  It is indeed Escher.  As you say, he’s well worth another visit.  I’ll have to look up some of his pencil work.

An excellent pencil drawing George.