August 04, 2005

• Paper—the only difference between paper at home and paper on the road is the size. At home, I can draw a 10" x 15" comic page on a large piece of paper (usually 11" or 14" x 17"). If I want to draw a comic page in the field, there are two options: split the page and draw it on two 9" x 12" pages; or draw it at 7" x 10.5" on one 9" x 12" page. With a light hand, the latter is possible (lettering must be done exceedingly carefully) and offers more flexible layout than the former.
  
• Brush—the Kaimei brush pen turns out to be a pretty good substitute for brush and ink. At $70 or so, it costs nearly 30 times more than a Micron brush pen—but the difference is worth it. It's a real sable brush head, rather than the nylon (or whatever they are) heads on most brush pens. Only two disadvantages I can see: the cap has a tendency to come off if you clip the Kaimei to a shirt; and the ink feathers out if you use certain kinds of paper (including Hunt bristol board). So I have to use Strathmore 300 if I want sharp lines.
  

• Hawk Quill—this is the reason for today's post. I've been using Hunt 107 pens for lettering, and for linework lately because it's faster than using a brush. Away from home, I can use a Kaimei instead of a brush, but I've had no substitute for the pen. I started looking around at calligraphy pens, but they're all too fat. The Hunt 107's nib is .25 mm wide, and the steel is very thin. It means you can get a very thin line, but it also means it's flexible enough to give a pretty thick line. I finally decided to seek out a Rotring ArtPen in the Sketch EF size. Nowhere could I find any size specifications for the pen, so I didn't know if it would be small enough. It arrived today, and it seems like it's about half a millimeter. The metal is thicker, so it's less flexible. But it does seem like it gives nice thin lines, and almost as fat a line under pressure as a Hunt 107. It takes more pressure, so I'll have to adjust my drawing technique a bit when I use it. And there's no telling how durable the nib is yet. But this could be a solution.
  
• Technical Pen—the Rapidoliner is still a pretty good solution, but for some reason they start leaking at some point after they've been carried around clipped to a shirt for a while. Mostly that doesn't mean blobby lines, just black fingertips, but still. Well, the Micron pens seem to be fair substitutes. They're not as smooth and easy to work with as the Rapidoliner, but they never leak.
  
• Drawing Board—the pad becomes the drawing board, of course. Using a cheap, 12" T-square (usually under 5 bucks at an art store) I can get nice 90-degree angles on my comics pages by relying on one edge of the pad to be straight, and taking all my measurements from there.
  

• 9 x 12 pad of Strathmore 300 smooth surface bristol board
  
• Kaimei brush pen
  
• 0.9mm mechanical pencil (leads break less than 0.5mm, and never needs sharpening)
  
• kneaded eraser
  
• Rotring ArtPen Sketch EF (we'll see if it holds up to real use)
  
• Micron 05 (0.45mm) and 08 (0.5 mm) nylon pens
  
• Ames lettering guide
  
• 12" metal ruler
  
• T-square