Any folks here on a2k that like pencils?

Is it this one?

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/nov/04/me-and-my-pencil-famous-creatives-on-their-tools-in-pictures

love 'em

I was pretty thrilled when they had big boxes of Staedtlers at the Dollarama last week ... pencils in the Hallowe'en treat bags! good pencils



I'm going back for more for myself.

I like them for drafting up knitting designs/patterns among other wonderful uses

one of the best finds in my mother's tiny jewelry box ... my mother's silver mechanical pencil ... part of a wedding set she got from hamburgboy

I like the grqphite holders (mechanical ngiiners pencils) or sketching. Ill keep about 7 or 8 different lead thicknesses and hardnesses. I did a show of quick plein aire pencil sketches in a "van Goghy" style. I sold all but one in the show (maybe I priced em too reasonably).

My other way of sketching involves using old fountain pens.

Ive been buying up old broken fountain pens and, with help of Fahrney and Sons, have restored them and have mounted newer spring formed bladders instead of the old fashion "Balloon style" bladders. I mostly use these for ink sketching now. I still will use a crow-quill or a "school nib" but I dont like the way those nibs dont last for me(I press rather heavily on the paper)

Now I usually sketch onto either velum or "magic marker" paper (Its verrry smooth and doesnt ball up with heavy ink lines).

I remember giving my cousin's son a great mechanical pencil that I wanted for myself (never did buy that exact pencil). Wonder if he still has it. Of course I won't ask.. probably it's been close to thirty years now. Someone in that family likely has it and is using it - there have been a variety of doodlers and drawers and painters among us. I did landscape architectural drafting (oh, plus the designing) for years. Business partner and I both liked drafting, often something like seven big fat pages for a set. Some of our clients got a kick out of our quick drawing as they watched, to show what we were talking about for design solutions to consider. Hey, I almost miss it...

You're so good at this stuff. I still have some quills sitting and waiting in a drawer. I should give them to a school, or something..

Adds, business pntr and I both never bothered to learn CAD.

That's very sweet to read.
Now I'm wondering where my mother's ink pen is (bet I can find it.} It was a small dark green pen, likely from, oh, say, 1916 or so....

Took some drafting courses in high school, because I thought I wanted to become an architect. Had lotsa pencils; I think they were mostly number 2s. Had t-squares, rulers, protractors, templates, and preprinted stick-ons. Trying to do detail work like stairways were too demanding for my eyes. I ended up majoring in Accounting.

I have famously to myself miserable eyes, but the good part is that I'm near sighted, not far sighted, so fine with close drawing or drafting.
Just don't ask me what the hell that thing is way over there...

Sincerely,
Ms. Trifocals Forever

I got out of my chair and easily found my mother's pen. I need to take a photo of it one of these days.

From the tip of the cap to the bottom of the pen is 3 3/4 inches. The green swirls are quite pretty, but not goofy. The nib and a couple of thin bands are gold-ish (I can't tell).

widest over all is 3/8" (cap edge). Alas, there was originally a bitty wire so the student could put her pen on a ribbon (I sort of remembered and checked, yes there is a tiny hole.) I'm not trying to sell it, just connecting it with my mother, born in 1901.

I figure these were even back then sort of useless re the amount of ink - but what do I know..

me too. Being nearsighted is the greatest way to be for a visual artist or microscopist.
I used to get ideas for abstract work by looking at slides in a revolving polarized-light sub stage microscope. Ill find some petrographic slides and post em and you can see how abstract they can be

Well, my link crashed so, in order to see what I meant, go to Mr Google qnd post a request for
"Polarized light microscopy of thin sections of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites"

whole raft of color thin sections (Each color , under specific rotation angle qnd at a 30 micron thickness will impart an almot spectroscopic rturn of each component mineral" . )

I spent myriad hours reading in a dark room, ucla back then. None of us had a clue re my eye stuff'

I bought some crucible stopper rods from the Cartech Steel mill several years ago. The stopper rods are huge fire brick rings with a graphite rounded end(They look like a huge phallus with a graphite glans). The graphite gets used fresh each "steel heat" and the ladel man would use a motorized lift to raise and lower the stopper rod. This controls the pouring rate of steel into molds in a sand pit as the many ton ladel dumps liquid steel . They only use the stoppers once and then dump them in a bone yard and they get crushed and recycled as road rock.
The graphite, I tak and turn into large blocks of drawing and shading large areas or things like patterns. When you have a large working surface you need as big a "pencil" as you can get.

Wow!

I can recall complaining to my mother about how unpretty the world was when I got my first pair of glasses.

Crisp and clear reveals dirt and acne.

I like my Impressionist view of the world much better, so only wear my glasses when I know I'm going somewhere I'll need to find/id something. People are often surprised to find out how vague my vision is.

My wife had to take a pair of glasses back because the over zealous optician had completely corrected her astigmatism. For decades she had been used to glasses which were comparatively gentle, these new ones made her feel sea sick. On the other hand, I (who also have astigmatism) feel the need to completely correct it. I wear glasses all the time I am awake, have done since I was aged 2. One time in the 1980s I had smashed my (glass) glasses, this was before plastic lenses, and I was waiting for my new ones. My prescription was so weird it used to take 2 weeks. After a few days I started to manage a bit without them. I couldn't drive, but I could watch TV and read by screwing my eyes up a bit. I was drinking coffee from a mug and I remember looking at it from above and thinking "that mug is badly made; it's oval". The long axis of the ellipse pointed away from me. I rotated the mug in my hand, and noticed that the long axis remained pointing away from me, and that the handle travelled around the oval, which is impossible. A very odd feeling. The mug was actually circular in cross section, of course. I think my wife has mentally adjusted to that sort of thing happening, whereas I have definitely not.

Staedtlers at the Dollar Store?

Wow - that used to be top of the line.