The Pencil is the most versatile instrument an artist can hold. It is also the most personal, the most intimate, the most self-revealing. A Pencil drawing is also more deliberate: the unconscious was there with the idea that came before the drawing, but not in the execution; this is why a Pencil drawing is more personal, more chosen, why there is more frankness in it. There is no cheating with a pencil. Colour is unneccesary because it can be implied. A Pencil drawing is not a sketch preparing for something ‘more important’. It is not a rehearsal for the big event. The Pencil drawing is the true, unguarded performance. It itself is the idea, best expressed with the wand, the mighty stick, the greatest tool ever devised by man: the humble Pencil. Many artists down the centuries have bewailed the fact that paintings are more valued than Pencil drawings, because they all knew what has just been said above to be true: that it is possible to say more in a Pencil drawing than in any other medium.
