Monday, June 20, 2011

BLACKWING PENCILS!


Back before we had all these fancy Cintiqs, tablets and stylus thingies
we used to draw with good old-fashioned pencils!

Yup... PENCILS.
They were these longish pieces of wood with an even
thinner piece of lead inside.
You sharpened one end to a point and then scratched it all over a piece of paper
(which is another discussion entirely)
until you had yourself an honest to goodness real live drawing in your hands.

And the king of these pencil thing-ama-waffles was the Eberhardt Faber BLACKWING!

Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed, baby.


I loved these puppies.

They were like spreading black butter across the paper.
So smooth.
And with just enough jagged texture to make your line interesting.

Yeah, they were a bit smeary.
And nigh impossible to erase.
Especially with that useless eraser it came with.

But that LINE!

I used Blackwings to clean up ALL my drawings back in the day.

And then they were gone.

Just... GONE!

They disappeared from my local art store.
Then they disappeared from EVERY art store.
Rumors spread that Blackwing pencils had been discontinued.
I figured it was just a horrible, mean-spirited lie until I actually called the company and asked if it was true.

It was.

Ugh.
Over the years I found some stray Blackwings here and there.
Mostly just stubs, but I did save one unsharpened Blackwing for posterity.


But recently I've heard rumblings...
Faint voices in the ether whispering about a resurrection.
Could it be?


Aw yeah... They're BACK!

I've got two boxes on the way,
but to be honest, I'm not sure what I'm going to DO with them.
Blackwings are a bit too soft and smeary for sketchbook doodling.
And most of my artwork is done on a Cintiq nowadays.
And who knows... they might not even feel the same as my old friends.

But trust me.
I'll find something to do with 'em!

Welcome back Blackwings!


8 comments:

Drury said...

There's a lot of stuff that could be done with pencils.

Pencil war for example. Smart minds make pencil catapults and wear heavy armor into battle... Especially diving masks are very important.

Lily said...

Wow, these look awesome, i think i'll get some. I usually draw in any HB pencil i find or some amazing Staedler pigment liners i buy at my local art shop. Sometimes I also use Sharpies, but those are messy since they go through the paper in my sketchbook therefore are only good for posters&stuff.

brianna14 said...

it's really hard to come across a good pencil. i only have one working pencil in my house and i know it's gonna stop working soon :( you should be happy to have such good pencils!!

Mariana =] said...

Pencils don't work very well with me, I keep breaking the graphite and so it gets kind difficult to sharpen them properly xP
So I just use... pencils...i mean pencil-cases... I don't know the right name for that thing Dx
So, anyway, I don't know pencils very well. But for me this pencil looks very good, lucky you. =)

Agreen37 said...

Very Nice, I got one question Mr. Warburton. Do you have any KND colored model sheets?

Agreen37 said...

BTW, these Blackwing Pencils are great for professional artists!!

MR. WARBURTON said...

sorry agreen... but i don't have any colored KND model sheets! but there are plenty of color images on the internets you can use as reference!

Agreen37 said...

Alrighty then, which links I should use?