The academic formative years- before I knew just how much I loved ink, I discuss the fleeting tragedy that is the pencil……
October 8, 2011
It has only been within the last year that I decided to form a relationship with pencil again. Our last stint ended when I found the precise v5 pen and adapted that as my primary art tool. As I am working on my latest assignment the truth of the pencil’s inconsistency shows.
A pen (unless it is dying) gives you a beautiful line, confidently, permanently. With a pen, it says, this is the decisive moment, here is your line. Pencil…pencil is a bit safer, and with good reason. When you aim to create something accurately, with proportion and scale and all good things in mind, it is necessary to have a trial and error process. You need something you can fix and move and manipulate. Pencil allows you to change and its companion the eraser will remove all the mistakes you’ve made so you and no one else will ever have to see them.
I’ve actually come to grow fond of my 7B pencil. But my 7B pencil…it is needy. The moment I start really getting into my sketch and the lines and shapes and forms start coming to life the tip is suddenly gone and the horrid woody stub of its former tip starts scrubbing its way into the paper. I have to stop, get up, find my sharpener, go over to the rubbish bin, crank it through a little metal hole, and by the time I get back to the paper the moment is gone. And if the moment is not gone then the mark is not the same. IF I am LUCKY, and the moment is still there and the mark is still the same…it doesn’t matter because I was never actually able to sharpen it because as it reached its prime sharpness the lead fell out, or it sharpened funny and the wood is creeping up one side. I hate it. I absolutely can not stand it. Not to mention once you start feeling good with that pencil, once you’ve worked all your shit out, it leaves. My beautiful 7B pencil that I finally started growing fond of is nearly a quarter of the size it use to be. What a fleeting romance. How perfectly unbearable you are.
10/8/11
This Fine Line; The Blog 