June 4, 2011

    Two bunches of bananas.

Feb 1, 2011

    Bananas... since I don't have anything else to say about bananas, I decided to comment on my "desert island" list of sketching tools. Having been sketching so much lately, I've found the minimum and simplest things I need are a number two school house yellow pencil, a folded paper towel (because my hands are terrible smudgers and I have to have it under my hand), a clean eraser (the one I like best so far is a pentel "clic" eraser that works like a mechanical pencil to feed out a column of eraser), a big fat soft round paint brush (also because my hands are terrible smudgers... I simply cannot brush off eraser crumbs without creating a mess of my graphite)... and a sharpener. That's it. Five things, not counting the "dirty" eraser on the other end of the pencil which is sometimes good for deliberately smeary erasing. 
    Of course, I could skip the paper towel and brush, and even the eraser... but I need them to try to do "a good job". I also sometimes have been using a pencil or two out of a six pencil Staedtler HB to 8B set, but generally don't bother to break any of them out, so I could easily leave them behind without regret. 
    I haven't really got a good portable sharpener yet... I'd like a cordless electric one but am using a plug-in electric. Of course, on the desert island I'd probably need a little hand-twisted sharpener, but I'd also probably keep messing up for lack of a good point because I get drawing and admit I just won't break to sharpen if it takes too long... at least I know my foibles.