It’s amazing how fountain pen day took off. It’s not even ten years since Cary and Aaron started it, but stationery fans and companies took to it like a fountain pen takes to ink.
If you can’t get enough of fountain pens have a look at my fountain pen video list to celebrate the occasion.
I have a small update for my 2016 blog post about Massimo Fecchi, the Italian artist who draws comics with the, in my opinion, best proportions, shapes and lines with beautiful variations.
When I asked Massimo about his pencils in 2016 he used a Rotring Tikky II for his initial drawings. Recently, he posted a photo of himself drawing for fans at the Comic Con in Wels, Austria. In this photo, he has switched pencils, or rather pencil models, not the pencil brand. When I asked him he told me that he is now usually using a Rotring 500 in either 0.5 mm or 0.7 mm. He described it as being lighter and more precise than the Tikky II.
I find it astonishing that even though most of us amateurs associate heavier pens, including mechanical pencils, with a more luxurious pen or better quality, while the professionals, in this case, Massimo, who use pencils as tools to get work done value lightness, probably to stop them from getting some sort of finger fatigue.
I believe that the use of this Massimo Fecchi’s photos falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.
Number 1 out of 50 things to do with a penknife1, according to the book’s author Matt Collins, is (… drum roll): Sharpen a pencil!
I believe that the use of this excerpt, taken from the book 50 things to do with a penkinfe by Matt Collins, falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service
Many of my videos that were originally posted to accompany blog posts were kind of forgotten, i.e. were never mentioned here, even though I made them to be used in a future blog post. This includes one of my most popular videos with currently (July 2020) more than 64,000 views: a demonstration how the Mars 502 lead pointer tub works.
Originally posted because the 502 doesn’t come with useful instructions and the comments left under the video show that there is/was a demand for a video like this.
It’s time to temporarily revive the pencil pot of the month series.
After spending five years tucked away it was high time for this Lego pencil pot to get assembled.
I bought it at the Lego Store in Manchester in August 2015 for £10.99 (~€12.15; ~$13.50) …after unsuccessfully chasing a previous Lego pencil pot, one that I thought looked nicer, for a few weeks.
You can find previous pencil pots of the month in the pencil pot of the month archive.
Price: August 2015, exchange rates: June 2020