Tag: colored pencils

National Pencil Day: Vintage Treasures in Old Stationery Stores

Today is national pencil day, which is just an excuse to showcase my latest vintage pencil finds from visiting a very old local stationery shop. Oftentimes shops like these still have new old stock of vintage pencils, and in my case I’m usually looking for local Jerusalem Pencils, but I often find other interesting things along the way.

Eberhard Faber Mongol pencils.

In this case I got a very large haul of Eberhard Faber Mongol #2 pencils, which I think are really good looking in terms of typography and ferrule design. Most of them are unsharpened, which is a bonus treat, although as usual with vintage pencils time has rendered their erasers unusable.

The real find for me were some very old Jerusalem Pencils (based on the logo), in this case coloured pencils (black and red). These are very waxy with relatively little pigment, but I don’t intend to draw with them anyway, and it just tickles me that didn’t translate “sunset” to “שקיעה” (or sunset in Hebrew) but rather chose to transliterate it, to give the pencil a more cosmopolitan feel.

Jerusalem Pencils Sunset coloured pencils.

Carpenter pencils are something I rarely find in stationery stores but do sometimes find in flea markets. In this case I lucked on three perfect Jerusalem Pencils Carpenter 199 pencils.

Jerusalem Pencils Carpenter 199 carpenter pencils.

Even rarer for me are these Jerusalem Pencils Office 46 red and blue dual pencils. One of them is badly warped and another is slightly warped, but they still have their handsome imprint with an art deco-y font.

Jerusalem Pencils Office 46 red-blue dual pencils.

These are more modern, as they have the Pan Art imprint, which means that they were likely made after Jerusalem Pencils was forced to rebrand itself after its bankruptcy. They’re charcoal pencils, and it will be interesting to give them a spin. I love the font selection here as there’s a lovely flow to it.

Pan Art Charcoal Soft pencils.

These are the last Jerusalem Pencils of the bunch, Pan Art coloured pencils from the 1000 and the Al Greco 6000 line. These are quite modern but I still haven’t seen them too often so I added them to the pencil pile.

Pan Art 1000 and Al Greco 6000 coloured pencils.

Here’s a pencil that I’m pretty sure was made by Jerusalem Pencils, but there’s no telling it if was under that name or Pan Art. It was sharpened at both ends so you can just make out that it’s an HB pencil, and enough of the imprint is left to know that it was made in Israel and is called Oriole.

Oriole pencil.

And here we enter the realms of the unknown pencil brand, where I just bought pencils for their imprint and style, such as this Patented Drawing “Liberty” pencil:

Patented Drawing “Liberty” pencil.

Which was made by the Pai-Tai Industrial Co LTD.

These Student 101 pencils from a Croatian company called TOZ Penkala (thank you to a penaddict slack user for helping me with this):

TOZ Penkala Student 101

These L&C Hardtmuth Studio 941 7 and 18 pencils that just have the best imprint font and logo:

L&C Hardtmuth Studio 941 7 and 18 pencils.

These Marco 4100 coloured pencils which I bought for the Comic Sans “Superb Writer” imprint, it made me laugh.

Marco 4100 coloured pencils.

And these random pencils all bought for their imprints: Springer, Factis “Eraser Pencil” 3012, and Warm Heart Color Pencils.

Of all of these I’ll probably only be using the Mongols, but I find having the others fun, and I may be able to swap a few of them for some other vintage pencils that I can enjoy.

Happy national pencil day!

Creative Draw: Koh-I-Noor Magic pencil, TWSBI JR Pagoda 0.7 and Pilot Juice Up 0.4

Things have been tough lately and I haven’t been in the mood to draw anything, write anything, post anything. So I decided to make myself create something, as silly and small as it could turn out to be, just to see if I can draw myself out of the funk.

I dug into my largest art and stationery supply drawer, and picked out three random items: a Koh-I-Noor Magic pencil, a TWSBI Jr Pagoda 0.7 mechanical pencil, and a Pilot Juice Up 0.4 in blue ink. Nothing good could come out of this random draw, I thought to myself, but I’ll draw something anyway:

The Koh-I-Noor Magic pencil comes in many varieties, some of the actually pragmatic. This Magic pencil is just ridiculous. It’s a giant, glittery, neon mess that makes me smile.

The TWSBI Jr Pagoda is a solid mechanical pencil, but in the battle against the Uni-ball Kuru Toga or any kind of drafting pencil it is always going to lose. I enjoyed using this underdog, and I think that design-wise it’s a very good mechanical pencil.

The Pilot Juice Up is excellent, and Pilot should replace all of its Hi-Tec-C pens with this refill (and perhaps even with this design). The refill gives Uni-ball gel refills a run for their money, and the barrel design is both sleek and ergonomic. This is a phenomenal pen that I really need to use more.

This turned out to be a fun exercise in creativity, and it made me smile for a bit. Will I do it again? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Vintage Beauty: Corgie 907 and National Pencil Day

It’s National Pencil Day and I decided to celebrate. Last year I picked up some vintage pencils in a stall in Spitalfields market in London, and they’ve been languishing unloved in their box ever since. The truth is I felt that they were too pretty to sharpen and use, which is both understandable (I mean look at them!) and silly. Pencils are meant to be sharpened, period.

So I broke out the “Corgie” (à Paris) 907 pencils, which are natural pencils coated with a thick layer of lacquer that makes them both shiny and satisfying to hold. The French appear to be more restrained in their choice of imprint fonts, but they go all wild when it comes to the wrappers around the pencils. Behold, creativity let loose:

Stunning, right?

Here’s the imprint (it’s hard to photograph, as the lacquer gets in the way. There are basically two fonts in use, and a very charming bugle logo. The Corgié à Paris factory was active from 1923 to around 1986 (thanks Brand Name Pencils) and if I’d have to venture a guess I think that these are from the ’60s, but it’s really hard to tell.

The grain on these pencils is fantastic. Just look at that:

Unlike some vintage pencils whose wood has dried out and become brittle with time, the Corgie 907s sharpen like a charm. They’re not very nice smelling (they just smell old), but there’s nothing to complain too much about.

These are No. 0 pencils, which makes them about 2B-4B, depending on the manufacturer. They’re soft and dark, and a joy to draw with, although they don’t hold a tip for very long. The graphite does smudge, but it doesn’t crumble, and there’s a good amount of feedback while using them. Here they are with some Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer watercolour pencils in use:

I had to sharpen the pencil three times to get through this A5 page. Not great for writing, great for expressive drawing. 

Go sharpen a pencil, and have some fun drawing or writing a little something for yourself.

Happy National Pencil Day!

Vintage Beauty: Eberhard Faber Colorbrite

Continuing the theme of “vintage pencils are awesome” today I’m using the Eberhard Faber Colorbrite red violet 2154 (which proudly notes that it’s both “woodclinched” and made in the USA). I counted 5 different fonts on this pencil, not including the 2154.

The fonts are my favourite thing on this pencil, although the end cap is elegant too and the colour is really unique and vibrant.

Go have fun with some pencils and listen to the birds for a while. They sing some hope into these dark times.

Closing Time (Journal Comic 11-8-19)

Journal Comic 11-8-19.jpeg

Leuchtturm1917 sketchbook, Kuretake Zig Mangaka pens, Deleter Neopiko-Line-3 pens, Caran d’Ache Pablo coloured pencils, Faber Castell Albrecht Dürer coloured pencils.

#inktober Day 6: vintage drawing pins tin

I like old tins, and this one is one of my favourites, because of the sheer amount of fonts packed into such a tiny box.

Drawn with a Pilot dual tipped brush pen on a blank Moleskine Star Wars notebook and coloured with Caran d’Ache Pablo pencils.

Field Notes Signature Plain Paper Sketch Book review

I just received a pack of the Field Notes Signature blank page edition and noticed that on the front of the band it said,”Sketch Book” right below the “Plain Paper”. I opened it up and saw that unlike my beloved Dime Novel edition, these notebooks had no page numbers (a plus for me) and their pages were white and not cream coloured. That made me decide to break them out for a very quick sketching opportunity, to see how well they faired.

The notebook doesn’t open flat, and it tends to want to close on itself, so I used a clip to keep it open when I was sketching. Ideally you’ll need two clips and maybe a backboard of some kind to use it comfortably. The paper, as is normal with sketching paper, doesn’t take washes too well. It’s relatively thin and it buckles pretty easily, so only the lightest of washes should be attempted with it.

The drum set above was sketched with a Sanford No-Blot Pencil. You can see the paper buckling even though very little water was applied with a water brush.

The paper fared better with fine brush pens:

A tiny bit of spread when you lay down the ink too thickly:

Zero complaints when it comes to pencil sketches:

As is to be expected with this kind of paper, it works well with pencils and coloured pencils, having just enough tooth to make it work well with them, but not so great with fine and extra fine fountain pens and thin technical pens.

As you can see above, the Extra Fine Waterman Phileas (with Colorverse Selectron pigment ink) stuttered on the page.

The Signature also suffers from being an awkward size for a sketchbook: too large to be truly pocketable, too small to allow for anything more than tiny, quick sketches.

As a sketchbook, I’d not recommend it. There are better options in the market, ones that open flat, in better sizes, with hardcovers (a plus when sketching on the go), that take washes a bit better than the Signature does.

That being said, it’s a fountain pen friendly Field Notes, and so long as you’re not set on using nibs that in the extra fine realm or using this notebook as your main sketchbook, it’s a nice little thing to carry around and play with. There’s nothing wrong with a notebook that can take a little doodle next to your todo list…