The Most “Me” Tool

 

9/22/22 I don't often use both a brush marker and colored pencils
in the same sketch, but this view seemed to need both a firm, strong line
and a fuzzy softness.

Commenting on some sketches she had posted on Instagram, Eleanor Doughty said that “line drawing with a parallel pen feels like the most ‘me’ of anything I make.” I understood exactly what she meant and said that if I had seen those sketches randomly somewhere, I would have recognized them instantly as hers. “It’s cool when we find a medium or tool that expresses us as if they were part of our body,” I said.

Afterwards, I thought more about my comment and how it applied to myself. What feels like my most “me” type of sketching? What is the medium or tool that I’m so comfortable with that it feels like part of my body?

I have quipped that I was born with colored pencils in my left hand. Since 2016 when I first embraced them, I have gradually become increasingly comfortable using colored pencils for all types of subject matter. They have long been my primary color medium, even in the field. More than any other medium, they enable me to express form and color in a way that feels the most “me.” A close second might be a soft graphite pencil, which has the same range of expressiveness (but obviously lacks color).

8/29/22 Brush pen (with help from a white gel pen):
How few lines can I make and still evoke this car?

But if that were true, wouldn’t pencils be the default tools I reach for every time, under any circumstance? More often, especially when time is short, I reach for a brush tip marker to capture a minimal line drawing. It meets an almost intuitive desire to make a contour drawing – the kind we first made as kids. And yet I wouldn’t say that a brush tip marker, at least in my hand, has the same range of expressiveness as soft pencils. Nor is it as satisfying, in either process or result, as pencils. Although my quick line drawings may be closer to the first drawings I made as a kid, I wasn’t born with a brush tip marker in my hand.

With further thought, I realized that those two go-to’s – brush tip markers and pencils – are less about how innate each feels to my body and more about the question of line versus form. A Uni Pin brush pen (my current favorite) demands confidence; it offers no second chances or opportunity for equivocation. I use it in circumstances when I don’t have time or inclination to develop the nuance of form – all I want to do is put the line down as quickly as possible. I adore it for quick gestures. In some ways, it’s always a direct challenge to myself: Do I have the confidence to draw that subject with such an unforgiving tool?

9/8/22 Soft pencils describe form better than 
any other medium I like to use.

(Incidentally, at one time I thought my Sailor Naginata Fude de Mannen fountain pen was the tool that felt the most like an extension of my body. Its responsive nib follows my hand with thicks and thins like no other pen I’ve used. But the main reason it stopped being my everyday-carry go-to is that it requires more maintenance than I want a pen to have if it’s going to serve the needs I described above. If I’m concerned about losing its impossible-to-replace cap when I drop it on a moving bus [which has happened, though I did retrieve it before it rolled out of my reach], or when it runs out of ink without warning [which also happens], it can’t do the job that an easily replaceable brush pen can. I still bring out the Naginata occasionally when I want that feeling of a pen growing out of my hand, and it’s a nice feeling.)

By contrast, a pencil, either colored or graphite, gives permission to search, explore and restate a shape or form. I find it easier to express the soft, organic forms of humans, animals and foliage with pencils, which are pressure-sensitive, deepen in value with added layers, and make a wide range of marks. I also prefer pencils when I don’t want the contour line to be visible. A pencil is what I choose when I think I will have enough time to use it in the way I want to and that yields an expression that is usually the most satisfying.

9/18/22 A brush-tip marker is ideal for capturing quick gestures with a few strokes.

So which tool is more “me”? In meeting unique needs, I’d have to say both. The one that gives me the most pure joy, however, is pencils. From that perspective, they are certainly the most “me.”

8/21/22 Pencil allows searching for the form and
restating lines again and again....

9/23/22 ...but this brush pen does not.