There is nothing so wonderful/heartbreaking/thrilling as falling in love.Just please oh please, don't fall in love with pens and paper.
The people who make the art supplies do not love you back.
And what do you do if the stop making you pen? Or, even worse, what do you do if they stopped making your pen over 20 years ago?
My brave cartoonist pal Stephanie Piro writes about her personal struggle over making the pen relationship work at the Six Chix blog here. (No permalink, but it's at the top of the page as of today.)
And my friend, cartoonist Sandra Bell Lundy, writes that her favorite drawing paper is going to be discontinued.
I got a call yesterday from a friend who was looking for the non-photo blue bristol with the pre-lined comic book and newspaper strip dimensions. I couldn't help at all.
When I show my cartoons in galleries, the medium is noted on that little card next to framed original as "ink and wash on typing paper." I could lie and just say that I used cheap materials so as to maintain a low overhead, but that's just a side effect to not being in love with any particular pen or paper. A blessing I never counted until I heard about my friends' agonizing ordeals from this past week.
Above photo: Stephanie's beloved 20+ year old Koh-i-noor Artpen taken from the Six Chix blog.
Tangentially related: the MY PEN!!!! film from Kids in the Hall. It runs just over 4 minutes and is one of the funniest things I've seen:
My other weird Bruce MacDonald fave short of theirs is Mr. Mann's Wig Shop.
Just a thought--maybe Stephanie could check that God of everything that ever was--ebay--for her pen? I know how they feel, I've been hunting for years for a drawing pencil I used in art class 40 years ago, that is no longer made! It's no longer made and I'm having to find an acceptable replacement.
ReplyDeleteThis is an all too familiar lament among cartoonists and illustrators. Our favorite drawing tools either discontinued or made in an inferior fashion.
ReplyDeleteI also found the Koor-a- Noor Artpen perfect for my line work. And used them quite a bit back in the 80's. One day I went to purchase a replacement I found that they were no longer being made.
My favorite Bristol, Canson Hi-Line has also been discontinued. As I type this I am down to my last 25 or so sheets. Guess I'll have to switch back to Strathmore which is not the same product it was years ago.
"Hang up the phone! I think it's just dangling!"
ReplyDeleteOh man... I'd forgotten about that...
That's one of their very best clips!
Huge KIH fan and that was my favorite piece. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading a story at the Charles Schulz museum: Seems that there was a particular pen nib that Sparky always used. The company announced they were discontinuing the nib, so he bought up all their remaining stock (something like 10,000 nibs), figuring it would last for the rest of his career.
ReplyDeleteIt did, and he didn't have to get used to another (inferior) nib.
Mike-regarding your friend that is searching for drawing paper with non-photo blue guides for comic books and strips, you should know about Canson's new line of Fanboy papers, created by Paul Abitabile.
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate to receive some free samples because I helped with some testing of early versions before these papers came to market.
The surface is EXCELLENT, better than Strathmore, and there is a whole line of sketch and layout pads, manga-sized pads, comic book page and cover sheets, newspaper strip pads, and some I may not even know about. And this is Canson I'm talking about. The quality is topnotch and they're not going away anytime soon.
I would recommend that you look into this and possibly do a blog entry about it, because obviously people are looking for something like this.