I always upheld the Derwent Drawing pencil set (back when it was a smaller set) as the best set for deep skintones. Natively, without frills or choices, you were given Sepia (Red), Chocolate, and Yellow Ochre. Perfection. I struggle much more with light skintones with these pencils. See my portrait of Caradoc to get a sense of that struggle.

Because I excitedly purchased the new pencils the second they were available, I used some Rioja and Autumn Leaf in this portrait, and I tried to use some of the Light Rust and Woodland (though they were honestly unnecessary) but besides that, the rest are from the 24 set that I’ve had for years in a very ship-of-Theseus sort of way.

The only issue I have with these pencils, honestly, is that they’re difficult to photograph due to the glare. Scanning works well, photographing is tough. But, I think that’s all rather a part of what makes them so brilliant. They’re soft, they’re blendable, they’re going to catch a glare. They’re also potentially going to bloom sometimes.

The paper I used is Fabriano sage toned paper, which I made into a little sketchbook.

30 June, 1972

Because Rhys had, inadvertently, convinced me that this Paul bloke was nefariously trying to steal him away and sell him, the image of him in my mind was someone that I could picture inside my father’s house. The people that came ‘round there were generally very fit, very vain, and very shifty. They all had eyes that’d follow me about the room, and lips that they were always moistening with their tongue. Most had a cocaine habit, so the jitters that came with it were worked off by being bouncy at all times. People in The Glass Hollow didn’t sit still—they didn’t even sit! So, I was looking for a thirty-year-old with a gold chain, an unbuttoned silk shirt, and a stern look of derision permanently etched into a cunning sneer.

The man that Eira urged us downstairs to meet was well dressed, that’s for sure, but he was well dressed for a completely different crowd than I was expecting. His starched coral shirt was buttoned at confidence, rather than cockiness, and his trousers were tailored and belled without being tight. I’d been under the impression that trousers were either slacked and vintage or tight enough to cut through the line of one’s arse. But, the bloke who was nervously wiping his palm onto his hip before offering it to Rhys and I in introduction managed to be fashionable without being obscene, which was practically unheard of. He looked a lot like a nervous schoolteacher, and the smile that stretched beneath his moustache was a lot like Eira’s smile. Even though I was smart enough not to trust ‘safe’ without a thorough investigation, right away I started to think that maybe he wasn’t evil at all.