pencils, their live and times, pencil stories please, art

I haven't really sketched for years, but used to a lot when I was in my teens and then my twenties.

My Art teacher always marked me with an A so I couldn't have been that bad, and said that I had a flair for drawing cartoons.
He said he knew someone in London who was always taking trainees on and putting them through an apprenticeship of sorts, but I never followed it through.

The first sketching obsession I had was with sailing ships, like this one below (not mine, but roughly the same quality, although I always had trouble with the sea).
The others were Superman, Batman, Popeye etc., until I discovered girls and also Frank Frazetta at about the same time.

Now, if I could sketch and paint like Frank, I would be very happy.

.......

Oh, yeah, ink pens.. and ink brushes for sumie.. but I gave the ink brushes to my brother in law, plus the how-to book.

I still have all mine ink pens, being a semi hoarder of my old art stuff.

I've long used electric sharpeners, given my needs with hand drafting and so on - I never did learn CAD. Actually, it's the same sharpener, all these years, kind of a work horse.

Doodles.. are some of your avatars by you?

Nice!

My avatars are all favorite comic book characters. The present one is Dan Dare, "pilot of the future", a British character from the 60s.

Oliver
I tried it with another one. It worked!!

Next let me teach you how to make a blowgun with a ball pen, to spread ink-dipped paper wads throughout the classroom.

I have no ink any more. Can I use coffee or tea?

coffee is darker, and thus better for this purpose.

I often teach one person from management department - how do you think they will react?