Grey Pencil

by Hannah Sampson

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What fascinates me is how some of the most seemingly simple things in life can make all the difference.

How a pen or pencil put to paper can create the most captivating poetry, or how its swipe on a contract may change one’s future. Or, more interestingly, how it brings paper to life when blankness is drawn upon.

My favourite artistic medium is grey pencil. Although I am no professional when it comes to drawing, I find it a rather delicious affair to outline, draw, shade, and colour in, all in pencil. Pencil. A simple medium, yet the same medium you used as a kid when writing those tricky maths tests.

Pencils’ lives are pretty short. Well, that is, if you use it often. Every pencil has a life story. Now before you scroll up and change the page because what you think I am writing is utter nonsense and extremely romanticized or embellished, just hear me out.

Thank you.

If you think back to when you were a child, do you remember when you got your first pencil? I certainly don’t, but if you were diligent you labelled it with your name; then later bit or sucked the end; certainly, you temporarily lost it; then mercilessly exploited the tiny eraser. In your free time you wrote secret letters to friends; and if you ever loaned your pencil, you threw it across the room; no doubt, when you sharpened it you bragged to your peers how tall your nib was compared to theirs. Your pencil had a life of its own.

And when it comes to drawing in pencil, it not only has a life but creates life, well on a page at least, before you think I’m too cheesy! I love how my pencil moves across the page, dancing in the rhythms of my wrist, creating artwork with a story. When I draw, the pencil brings to life vision that is hidden within the tapestries of the blank page.

With everyone in lockdown and the world either in slow motion or moving in bursts of united and fervent energy, unpredictably swirling in the universe, I think that one thing that is guaranteed to be in our homes is a sheet of paper, whether it be the remnants of a letter nibbled by naughty snails, or a quality textured sheet of art paper. And we all have a pencil: Tall or short we have one lying around somewhere deep in the abysses of our drawers, behind the stacks of bank statements and unsent love letters.

In this period of lockdown everything has been turned upside down, yet creativity thrives in such moments of pure uncertainty. It drives us as artists. One thing that is certain, is the possibility of creativity.

The possibility of one grey nib is endless. Until it breaks, of course. Then we must sharpen it to awaken its possibility yet again.

Drawing by Hannah Tayla Sampson, 2020: Pa, My Muse

This is a simple pencil drawing of my Pa (grandfather). He died last week at the age of 88 years [11 June 2020]. Here he is standing next to a boat he built many decades before.

It doesn’t cost much to create art. And creating art during these uncertain times is quite therapeutic.

Every artwork has a story behind it, or in it, or surrounding it.

What story will your art tell?

Drawing by Hannah Tayla Sampson, 2020

Drawing by Hannah Tayla Sampson, 2017/2018