"Possessed Pencils - I'd buy that for a Dollar !"

A buck for 8 Halloween theme pencils seemed like a pretty good deal at Target (also spotted party size bags with 40 pencils on sale for $3.50), quite a reasonable investment for the subject of this blog review.
Made in Vietnam.
The pencils sharpened easily enough with conventional and electrical sharpeners. The Halloween graphics layer yielded long plastic strips that could jam the sharpeners, so take care to remove them as they build up quickly.
As seen around the pumpkin stem, their pencil marks are prone to smudging.
The matching colored erasers in their ferrules are adequate for making corrections while writing, but they tend to leave some color residue in the freshly erased area. When drawing, you should probably rely on your regular white vinyl eraser instead.
While nowhere near as smooth as premium wooden pencils, these novelty pencils perform adequately for writing and some fun doodling. They are most likely HB grade, and can produce fairly dark strokes with heavy pressure.
While they might start drawing smoothly enough, every now and then the "Possessed pencils" can feel a bit scratchy when you run into uneven coarse particles within their cores.
The graphite tips wear down rather quickly after a couple of doodles.
Hmm, guess the Halloween spirit is still affecting my choice of doodles lately. These novelty choice would make a fine treat for the kiddies this coming weekend. Might be worth picking a few more next week for class use when they will probably go on clearance.

Carolina Pad Sasquatch Earth Friendly Pencils review

Another Back to School clearance find at a big-box retailer: a tube of 8 Carolina Pad Sasquatch Earth Friendly No. 2 Pencils for a buck.
According to their label, these pencils contain recycled materials and were made in Taiwan. The card stock tube packaging with closing folds on both ends mirrors the pencil barrel colors and looks quite smart.
The first sharpened Sasquatch pencil produced continuous smooth shavings of two different tones since one the slats (the two pieces of wood that are glued together to make the pencil barrel) was noticeably darker than the other.
Apparently the wooden slats used for making these eco-friendly pencils were of rather uneven quality as shown by the "fuzzy" texture of the freshly sharpened Sasquatch pencil on the right. By contrast a pencil made with sturdier higher quality wood, the Tombow Mono 100 pencil on the left came out with a very smooth tapered point using the same electric sharpener.The Sasquatch pencil features a ferrule with a green eraser that performed adequately on this test swatch. It does wear down quickly when erasing wide areas.
Test doodles drawn on a Piccadilly sketchbook. The Sasquatch pencil would be an adequate choice for writing and taking notes, but felt too hard and scratchy for my sketching style. While it made reasonably dark marks, it felt more like an H lead rather than a regular No. 2 or HB pencil. The tip of the Sasquatch lead dragged on the paper when compared to the smooth performance of Japanese premium graphite pencils that glide effortlessly on the same paper. So yes kids not all pencils are the same. While you can certainly sketch with the average pencil usually found at office supply and regular retail stores, a bit of online research can easily and quickly yield quite a few suitable sources of premium pencil alternatives that can make your drawing experience a lot more efficient and pleasant.

Selecting a Graphite Pencil Brand and Grade for Sketching

Demo video 1. Trying out different graphite pencils on regular Georgia Pacific 20 lb Copy paper: Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 10B, Paper Mate Classic No. 2 HB, and Derwent Graphic H pencil.
Quick comparison of the marks drawn with H,10B, and HB pencils. With its higher clay content, the Derwent Graphic H pencil produced the lightest marks in this example. Harder H pencils were traditionally used for drafting purposes (in the days before AutoCAD), since they produce light clean lines that are fairly smudge resistant. They also retain their sharp points longer requiring less frequent sharpening. They are also a good choice for carefully rendered drawings where you build your shapes and shadow gradually. When working with harder pencils, it is advisable to pick thicker strong papers to avoid ripping your drawing surface with their sharp tips. For my style of speed sketching, I find many brands too dry and scratchy for my taste. Thus I seldom use anything harder than a 2H pencil.
Demo video 2 using a Stad One Push holder and a Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 10B pencil. Sketching with a very soft B pencil, you can produce very dark marks quickly. Its drawbacks are that the lines are susceptible to smudging and that the pencil tips tend to get blunt rather quickly.
The Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 10B pencil might be the softest graphite pencil in my collection. Its high graphite content makes for a very sleek well-lubricated pencil point that allows for the quick lay down of rich dark tones while speed sketching.
Demo Video 3 comparing relative darkness of 3 pencils. Graphite grade scales are not consistent and do tend to vary between different brands. Thus the Tombow Mono 100 2H pencil laid down darker marks than the Derwent Graphic H pencil. The Paper Mate Classic No. 2 HB pencil was the darkest of the three in the picture above.
Comparison chart between Mitsubishi Hi-Uni and Derwent Graphic pencils. In general I prefer the darker marks and smooth feeling of a 2B or 3B Hi-Uni as my single choice for a sketching pencil. Yet nothing beats experimenting on your own with different pencil brands, graphite grades, and types of paper to figure out what actually works best for you. IMO part of the fun of being an artist is to play with as many different options as possible to discover your favorite tools. Though please remember that drawing and practicing often with whatever tools you have readily available to you is more important.

Mall Food Court Sketches

Since I had a few minutes (well close to an hour and a half) to spare at the mall food court last weekend, I was able to get a few observation and fantasy sketches done with some of my favorite sketching pencils: Staedtler Mars Technico 780 2 mm leadholders loaded with H, HB, and B graphite leads.



Remember kiddies: "Carry a sketchbook and pencils everywhere you go, so you may take advantage of every opportunity to get some drawing practice you might come across".

Deadline extended until this Wednesday, so get drawing kids!

Since I do not check my Facebook page often, I had missed the announcement for this neat Staedtler Mars Lumograph drawing contest that will end on Wednesday 9. So if you are up to it, sharpen those pencils and get cracking since you still have a few hours left in the day boys and girls. The Mars Lumograph pencils are the neat artist pencils that we used in our cartooning classes. This Manga Wizard was drawn on the Maruman Croquis S163 pocket sketchbook and then added to the template below.
These were my two eleventh hour entries. Hope you take this speed sketching challenge and come up with a couple of your own now that you have another day to come up with your designs.

Paper Mate Classic HB #2 Wood Pencils

Another find from the dollar bin at an Office Depot store. 24 unfinished pencils for a buck sounded like a pretty good deal, and they seem like an adequate starter pencil for my cartooning classes. The back of the box indicates that these pencils were "finished in the USA with wood from Indonesia and/or China and other imported and USA materials". Whatever happened to pencils been simply made on a single country I wonder.
For a quick comparison got a few pencil samples from my collection that lie on the opposite end of the value priced daily general use Paper Mate Classic pencils. The Utrecht Drawing pencil is a store brand pencil designed for art students. The General's Draughting pencil is an above-average thick graphite lead American-made pencil that I found browsing at Pearl. In my opinion the Japanese-made Mitsubishi Hi-Uni is the pinnacle of what a premium art pencil should be and the standard against which all other pencils should be measured: ultra-smooth dark break-resistant lead with an impeccable distinct barrel coating finish.
This comparison marks chart highlights the difference in darkness between the different graphite grades and brands. The 8B Utrecht Drawing pencil is the softest and darkest of the group and naturally is quite prone to smudging. The fact that the F Mitsubishi Hi-Uni pencil looks darker than the HB Paper Mate Classic shows how graphite degree ranges can differ across manufacturers. The Paper Mate pencil's tip was the only one to snap and break off repeatedly during this doodle test, produced the faintest lines, and it also felt the scratchiest. While it is possible to draw with all 4 pencils, it is clear that the Paper Mate was built first as a writing tool for everyday use rather than a practical sketching tool. Like I often remind my students: Artist grade pencils typically do not feature an eraser while writing pencils like the classic #2 usually sport ferrules and erasers. The small pink erasers are adequate for making quick corrections while taking notes but tend to be too abrasive to correct drawings without marring the art paper surface.

Maped Tip Top Pencil sharpener + Eraser review

Browsing through the Target Back-to-School supplies section, I spotted these neat pencil accessories for $1.19: the Maped Tip Top cap pencil sharpener and pencil cap eraser set. They strike me as a value alternative to the Faber Castell Perfect Pencil without the extender function. They were available in several bright colors, but I naturally picked the yellow orange one to match my Maped Zenoa eraser.
When attached to the back of the pencils, the cap sharpener and cap eraser allow the pencils to be clipped to a sheet of paper. Can't imagine this to be a particular useful function, but thought to mention it since this feature is highlighted on the back of the packaging card.
Both accessories fit nicely as pencil toppers on the Mitsubishi Hi-Uni and Mitsubishi Unistar pencils.
Time to test the effectiveness of the cap eraser on this HB graphite doodle.
The cap eraser works quite nicely though it tends to get soiled fairly easily as shown by the graphite smudges on its side.
Tested the new sharpener blade sharpening a few Caran D'Ache Pablo colored pencils and a couple of graphite pencils.
The cap sharpener yields some nice sharp pencil points and can effectively double as a point protector.
I am pretty happy with the initial performance of these inexpensive pencil accessories and have made a place for both of them in my premium graphite pencils case.

Doodling in the waiting room at the auto shop

Always carry some art supplies with you! Had I not done so I would've wasted about an hour waiting for an oil change. With my Creative Mark 5.6 mm lead holder loaded with a sharp 4B graphite lead, I managed to fill about 9 sheets of card stock with doodles practicing my sketching symbols for a variety of cartoon subjects. Since I did not stop to sharpen the lead, lines grew increasingly thicker on the latter sketches.

Staedtler Lumograph Class Pack: Gearing up for Manga Cartooning classes for the summer

Just received the art supplies for the summer manga cartooning classes. Thus seemed like a good time to do some quick tests with the sketch kits contained in the Staedtler Lumograph Class Pack. The class pack yellow canister sharpener is large enough to hold a fair amount of shavings and works ok, but I find its cutting performance to be not as smooth as that of the KUM wedge sharpeners. Even when held vertically, the yellow sharpener tends to crack and snap off the sides of the wood tip.
Comparison chart of the different graphite pencils drawn on Blick White Sulphite 80 lb Drawing Paper. The HB, B, and 2B pencils lay down swatches that retain their linear quality while the 4B, 6B, and 8B pencils easily produce uniform dark tone areas. The harder pencils work well for the initial blocking and sketching of a drawing structure, and the softer pencils help define the forms and darker shadow areas in the final stages of the drawing process.

Sample Manga Drawings at Introductory lesson

Started a 7-lessons Manga Workshop today with a group of Middle School students ages 13 to 14. I asked them to draw these sample sketches to have a benchmark to compare against the drawings that they will be doing by the end of the Manga cartooning course.
Pentel 0.7 mm Mechanical pencils were used to draw all of these sketches.
Update 05-11-09: We had a handful of students added by the second lesson of the Cartooning class, so these are their baseline drawings plus a couple of misfiled doodles by members of the original group.