This weekend I accomplished my mission: buying the best pencils in the whole wide world.
I mostly use graphite pencils, Mirado Black Warriors, to be precise. Mirados have a special kind of graphite/wax composite lead. The wax makes the graphite a bit smoother and less smudgy. I like 2Bs for a really dark line.
Occasionally I use Prismacolors. These are the high-rent colored pencils. They are wax-based, with a dense pigment concentration and make for very dark lines. There are several problems with them, however. Because of the waxy binder, the lines have a reflective sheen that can be really distracting. The waxiness also makes them a bit resistant to releasing pigment to the page without a pretty deliberate exercise of force. Finally, they are almost completely uneraseable. I have used them on occasion and have always been frustrated. In 90% of situations, the eraseable cousin (Colerase, also very waxy) does the same job in a more forgiving fashion.
A few weeks ago I read a scanned article from an old illustration magazine. It was a step-by-step explanation of Peter de Seve's process. In the article he alludes to:
I can understand why someone would say it took them years to find this pencil. It is really like nothing else. The best description I can come up with is that it's like drawing with an eyebrow pencil. It's a very fine-grained dry colored pigment. It doesn't appear to have a wax binder. It is completely matte on the paper and requires almost no force to make a dark line. However, unlike soft graphite, it doesn't smudge particularly easily. It erases just enough.
I mostly use graphite pencils, Mirado Black Warriors, to be precise. Mirados have a special kind of graphite/wax composite lead. The wax makes the graphite a bit smoother and less smudgy. I like 2Bs for a really dark line.
Occasionally I use Prismacolors. These are the high-rent colored pencils. They are wax-based, with a dense pigment concentration and make for very dark lines. There are several problems with them, however. Because of the waxy binder, the lines have a reflective sheen that can be really distracting. The waxiness also makes them a bit resistant to releasing pigment to the page without a pretty deliberate exercise of force. Finally, they are almost completely uneraseable. I have used them on occasion and have always been frustrated. In 90% of situations, the eraseable cousin (Colerase, also very waxy) does the same job in a more forgiving fashion.
A few weeks ago I read a scanned article from an old illustration magazine. It was a step-by-step explanation of Peter de Seve's process. In the article he alludes to:
This soft, brownish pencil that creates tapered lines is one secret I don't want to cough up. There aren't many things; mostly I'm pretty open, but it took me ages to find this pencil.Secret pencils. de Seve is my most favorite artist ever. Seeing one of his New Yorker covers when I was 11 years old made me know I had to draw; it was my destiny. Now I knew I had to find this pencil and try it for myself. A blog I came across suggested that they were Derwent Drawing pencils (not Sketching). Comparison with the pencil in de Seve's hand (round, varnished wood barrel), and this guess probably checks out.
I can understand why someone would say it took them years to find this pencil. It is really like nothing else. The best description I can come up with is that it's like drawing with an eyebrow pencil. It's a very fine-grained dry colored pigment. It doesn't appear to have a wax binder. It is completely matte on the paper and requires almost no force to make a dark line. However, unlike soft graphite, it doesn't smudge particularly easily. It erases just enough.
That's wonderful :) Also, the bearded man running the shop on the New Yorker cover looks so damn proud.