Graphite, Grit, and a Bit of Obsession

Wendy Spurlin — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 23:58:41 +0000

Every artist has that one medium they keep crawling back to like a comfortable bad habit. For me, it’s pencil. Not flashy. Not trendy. Just graphite, pressure, patience—and a borderline unhealthy attention to detail. These three pieces span years of work, from high school all the way to more recent explorations, and they show exactly why I’ve never been able to quit this medium. Each one uses a completely different approach, but they all come back to the same thing: control, texture, and the slow, deliberate building of form.

The Classic: Graphite on White Paper

This one is where it all started. Straight graphite. White paper. No tricks. And honestly? This is where your skills either show up… or they don’t. There’s nowhere to hide when you’re working like this. Every shadow has to be earned. Every transition has to be smooth enough to feel like skin instead of scribble. The subtle shifts around the lips, the jawline, the shoulder—this is all about restraint and control. It’s not just drawing what you see. It’s deciding what not to push too far.

Flipping the Script: White Pencil on Black Paper

This is where things get fun. Instead of building shadows, you’re building light. Everything starts in darkness, and you pull the form out of it—edge by edge, highlight by highlight. It forces you to think completely differently about value and contrast. The bottles don’t exist until you make them exist. That’s the addictive part. The glow, the surface texture, the way light wraps around those shapes—it’s all about precision. One wrong mark and suddenly your glass looks like a melted candle from hell.

Controlled Chaos: Graphite + Eraser on Canvas

And then there’s this one… which is basically me deciding to break my own rules. Graphite laid down first. Then pulled back out with an eraser. Add a little white pencil on top, and suddenly you’re not just drawing—you’re sculpting light out of darkness and smearing it around like something exploded on the surface. It’s messy. It’s controlled. It’s somewhere in between. This technique flips the mindset again: instead of adding detail, you’re removing it to reveal form, which feels slightly illegal… and incredibly satisfying.

Why Pencil Still Wins

Out of everything I work with—digital, paint, collage—pencil is still the one that feels the most honest. No shortcuts. No filters. No hiding behind texture or color. Just pressure, value, control, and a whole lot of time. It’s slow and unforgiving. And it forces you to actually see what you’re doing, which is probably why I keep coming back to it.

Christopher Walken Caricature – First Digital Pencil Portrait

Wendy Spurlin — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 23:41:00 +0000

This was my very first attempt at a caricature — and my first time trying to recreate the feel of graphite using Adobe Fresco. Digital pencil is a completely different creature than real graphite, but this project taught me so much about texture, pressure, and letting the weirdness lead the way.