It's no secret to anyone who looks at my work for more than 10 seconds that I tend to be very tight with my mark making. While I enjoy the look of loose lines and broad strokes from other artists, I struggle to do the same in my own artwork.

After wandering through our local art store this past weekend I stumbled across an interesting new material I had never seen before called graphite putty.

Made by ArtGraf No1, the putty is malleable, can be used dry or wet, and is beyond fun.

And it's messy.

Really messy.

Robot hands messy.

Nonetheless, I squeezed it in my hands and went for it; no planning of ideas, no preliminary sketches, just intuitive mark making. The creative flow took over, that sweet spot as an artist where decisions are made effortlessly and quickly. 20 minutes later I created a piece that was so outside my norm it made me smile.

Well, not completely outside of the norm, I did manage to sneak in a hand and bird after all.

I love the texture the putty creates as well as the saturated blacks. It's definitely a material for finding that artist flow.