Conté ‘carp on black’ sketch series 1 of 3

I bought a square format, black paper Daler-Rowney sketchbook yesterday and before sullying its pristine surface with a poor drawing, I did this sketch first on a seperate sheet of paper. In fact this first fish was drawn in white Conté over a black-marker area, which proved not nearly as nice and solid a black (of course) as the black paper which was used for the next two drawings. But still, a worthy trial. When drawing what is effectively ‘in reverse’, i.e with white as the highlight, it’s tempting to draw outlines as you would with a black-on-white example, but that would kill the subtlety, so restraint is the order of the day.