Christopher Cook: Graphite and painterly drawing

Christopher Cook: Cumulus: Graphite 

I have looked at graphite as a drawing medium in an earlier post, but like all pigments graphite powder can also be dissolved in resins, oils and mineral spirits. Christopher Cook makes his own graphite substances which work more like lubricants, a role that graphite has often taken when used in metal casting, as it was used to lubricate the inside of moulds.

Christopher Cook

Cook uses his graphite in a similar way to certain mono printing techniques. Degas in particular used to work on glass plates with ink, rags, brushes and turps washes, in order to explore the potential of ink’s liquidity and ability to suggest forms by playing with the way light and form could be suggested by scumbling, stroking, washing and rubbing into the surface.

Degas

All you need to make mono prints like these is a sheet of glass or plastic, some oil paint, some rags, turps and brushes, then if you put an image underneath the glass sheet you can see it as you move the ink about, but not well enough to be restricted to copying the image below. It's a great process to use if you are trying to simplify an image and at the same time add atmosphere and painterly qualities. 

There are some how to do it videos online. 

A good introduction to tools and textures and working on a plastic sheet.

Monoprint combination techniques

An artist at work using mono print processes

Drawing on the back of the paper mono print process 

For best quality an etching press can be used for plastic plates, but Degas would have just used a wooden spoon and would have carefully burnished the back of his paper, carefully lifting it from one corner in order to see if he had transferred enough ink onto his paper. 

Below is a reference to graphite as a sculptural material which should be linked to my earlier post on graphite.
Life sized skeleton that can vibrate itself into nothingness.