OK, well, wine and a lemon anyway. The song is up to you. Why did I choose these items to draw tonight? For the very profound reason that they were sitting on the kitchen counter near each other, and I happened to be standing next to them when I decided I wanted to draw something.

This is my first try with vine charcoal – two sticks; one hard and one soft. Vine charcoal does not seem quite as black as willow, and it seems a little easier to control gradation with the vine. Maybe I’m just getting more comfortable with charcoal in general; I won’t really know for certain until I do another drawing with willow.

It’s probably a little early for me to be rushing to judgment, but having worked with a couple of different kinds of charcoal and different degrees of hardness, I think I prefer the softer charcoals. Working with a soft, mushy stick of charcoal feels more like painting than drawing. The hard charcoal seems like it will be useful for working with finer detail and lighter shades of gray, so I won’t be throwing it out or anything.