Product Review: Zebra F-301 Ballpoint Pen (a Better Bic)

The Zebra F-301 ballpoint

Now that the pressure of InkTober is over, I started thinking about how much I enjoyed drawing with the Bic – if only it had a more pleasant body. Early in the month, I had tried a couple of other better ballpoints (better in terms of body quality), like the Uni Jetstream I keep in my bag for quick receipt signatures, but the ink just isn’t the same.

11/3/18 Zebra F-301 ballpoint in Baron Fig notebook

On a very rainy afternoon yesterday, I started digging through our kitchen junk drawer for all the ballpoints I could find (it seems to be the place in our home where pens of all sorts go to die). I tried them all, and none contained ink similar to the Bic, except one: the Zebra F-301.

I’m not sure how that pen landed in the drawer – I don’t remember buying it – but its ink has a similar oily quality as the Bic. It’s not quite as sticky as Bic ink, so it probably means it’s less oily, but it blobs slightly, just like the Bic, and most important, it has the same line quality that changes with varying pressure yet can be made to look consistent. The 0.7mm tip size is close to the hotel Bic Stic I used all month.

I looked it up on JetPens, and it’s a $2 pen – so not much more expensive than a Bic – but the stainless steel body feels better and more substantial than the Bic, it’s retractable (which I favor over capped ballpoints), and – important to me – it’s refillable. It’s going into my bag as my ballpoint of choice.

(I have to admit, I never in a million years expected to be writing a ballpoint pen review on this blog! Life is full of surprises.)

Proverbial Pea Soup

10/22/18 Wedgwood street with ballpoint

As is typical for this time of year, fog has been rolling in at night and staying through the morning, shrouding the Puget Sound area with a thick white blanket. It burns off by early afternoon, so I usually wait until the sun breaks through to go out sketching. On Monday morning, though, the fog was exceptionally dense and mysterious, and I couldn’t resist heading out to the Wedgwood neighborhood, where I knew the fog would be thickest.

When sketching fog, my first impulse is to reach for graphite, but since my Bic ballpoint is adhered to my left hand for InkTober, I thought I’d give it a try. Although it’s been helpful to learn to use a Bic by thinking of it as a pencil, the one thing I can’t do with a ballpoint is lay it at an angle and smudge the ink into a soft haze. I may be getting friendlier with ballpoint, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss graphite.

After sketching the street at left with the Bic, I couldn’t resist one more – this time with graphite. You can take the pencil away from the girl, but you can’t take the girl away from the pencil.

10/22/18 A different Wedgwood street, this time with graphite (and a little colored pencil)

#InkTober2018 Check-in: My Head is Spinning

10/7/18 Swan gourd

I didn’t think I’d be doing another InkTober check-in already, but yesterday’s and today’s sketches left me dazed and confused, and it helps me to analyze the issue by thinking out loud (and my way of doing that is by writing).

Hatching a flat surface is easy enough; it’s just a matter of practicing making lines so that they are evenly spaced and consistent in weight. But a curved or spherical surface is a whole other matter. Before I began sketching the “swan gourd” yesterday (yes, it really looks like that – I bought it at Metropolitan Market, which is full of bizarre gourds and squashes this time of year), I thought about an important technique I learned from Suzanne Brooker when using colored pencil and graphite: Follow the shape of the form with the pencil stroke. Even though the drawing will eventually be completely or nearly completely covered in graphite or pigment, the many, many repeated subtle pencil strokes will show through the overall hue or tone, and they will visually reinforce the three-dimensional form of the subject.

I even reviewed lessons in hatching in Alphonso Dunn’s guide to Pen & Ink Drawing because I remembered seeing excellent examples of the same principle I had learned from Suzanne: The hatch marks follow the shape of the surface and change direction with the change in plane.  

Intellectually, I understood this concept, and I had practiced it regularly while I was studying with Suzanne. Yet when I sat down with the swan gourd, I got very confused about which way the marks should curve.

I needed lots more practice, so today I tried more pedestrian produce. The banana went well – it has relatively simple plane changes – but the lumpy, bumpy Bartlett threw me some curve balls, and my head was spinning again. (I realize now that instead of sketching an apple whenever I test new colored pencils, a pear would give me better practice.) Stay tuned for more lumpy produce.

10/8/18 Bartlett and banana

Technical note: I’m avoiding color as I do these hatched value studies in ballpoint pen this month, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use colored paper! As I was looking at the banana and pear, wishing I could use colored pencil, I remembered a Shizen Design sketchbook I was given, which contains five colors of paper in one book. The thin paper buckles even from heavily applied markers, but it’s very friendly toward ballpoint. In fact, every paper I’ve ever tried with ballpoint has been friendly toward it. I’ve never met an art medium that was so indiscriminate in its paper pairings.

#InkTober2018 Check-in: I Get the Bic

10/5/18 Day 5 at Zoka Coffee: Using different "grades" of ballpoint

Usually my InkTober insights don’t come until later in the month, but less than a week into it, I’m already learning.

As mentioned on Day 1, I am once again committed to exploring ballpoint during InkTober. I’ve tried in previous years, but I always gave up after a few days because the material annoyed me, and I didn’t like the clunky results. This year, though, I’m determined to stick it out. My first couple of days with a Bic Cristal were as clunky as ever because my hatching is rusty, and I questioned why I so masochistically insist on struggling with ballpoint.

10/1/18 Days 1 and 2: clunky as ever

10/2/18

On Day 3, however, I remembered that Bic ballpoint ink can be built up gradually in layers, almost like graphite. It’s also pressure-sensitive the way graphite is. Since pencils and I have a good relationship, I wondered if I’d have a better time with ballpoint if I treated it more like graphite. I still used hatching for this sketch of my hand, but I also varied the pressure, and I was pleased with how faint a mark I could make when I applied very light pressure. It really is the “pencil of pens”! It was a gratifying discovery that encouraged me to plunge forward with ballpoint.

10/3/18 Day 3: I discover the "pencil of pens"

The next day, however, was a setback. I had been using a fat 1.6mm Bic Cristal, which has a bad habit of leaving unintended blobs of ink, so I dug through a kitchen drawer for a Bic Stic pen (the ubiquitous kind we all find in hotel rooms), which has a finer point. The mistake was taking it to life drawing. Even during a 20-minute pose, I didn’t have enough time to hatch it properly, and my results were less than satisfying. That experience reminded me that ballpoint is like pencil in another way: I have to allow enough time to use it well.

10/4/18 Day 4: Ballpoint and life drawing don't mix.

Day 5 dawned wet and cold, so I went to Zoka, my favorite coffee shop for sketching. This time I tried something different again. Although I’m not a fan of writing with ballpoint in general, I always carry a Uni Jetstream 4 & 1 in my bag for times when I need an implement to grab quickly, like when I’m signing a credit card slip or jotting a note to myself. Its 0.7 mm tip is much finer than the Cristal’s 1.6mm, so as long as I was thinking of ballpoint as graphite, I decided to use the Jetstream as an “HB” and the Cristal as a “4B.” Sketching a woman reading next to the windows, I found the hatching process to be meditative and relaxing (top of post). Using “grades” of ballpoint seemed to help me adjust values better and stay in a (happier) pencil frame of mind.

The biggest discovery came yesterday, Day 6. Continuing to think of my Jetstream as an HB grade pencil, I used it to draw the contour line of my hand holding a Blackwing (from a photo this time – how else would I get to draw my left hand? 😉), and that’s when I realized that it’s not possible to get a pale mark with it as I can with the Bics. (see my test hatch marks shown to the left of the sketch.) With the Bic, I can make the initial contour line light and darken it along with the tone as the drawing progresses (see the previous hand sketch). The Jetstream’s ink formulation is smoother and flows more consistently than Bic’s, which makes it pleasant to write with. But that same characteristic makes it harder to apply in varying densities by changing the pressure on the point. I abandoned it after finishing the too-dark contour line and switched to the Bic Cristal for toning.

10/6/18 Day 6: I get it now.

 I get it now: This is why so many ballpoint artists seem to favor the lowly Bic. It’s a pressure-sensitive medium that can be applied gradually in layers of tone. The more I think of a Bic as a pencil, the more I like it. I think the rest of InkTober is going to be more fun, now that I’ve figured out how to approach ballpoint.

How’s your InkTober going?

It’s That #InkTober Time of Year Again!

9/23/18 Bic Cristal, Baron Fig notebook

For the fourth consecutive year, I’m taking part in InkTober, Jake Parker’s annual initiative to encourage drawing with ink. The rules are simple: Make a drawing in ink; post it on social media with the hashtags #inktober and #inktober2018; repeat throughout the month of October.

Optional prompts are offered each year, but I don’t follow them. Instead, I try to take up the spirit of the event by giving myself a personal challenge. In 2016 I wanted to focus on drawing more from imagination, which was particularly difficult for me, but by the end of the month, my ongoing weather-reporting bunny had been born! Last year I decided to practice hatching, another challenge for me, and by month’s end I saw improvement.

Another focus I started with last year was working in ballpoint pen. I’ve seen so many examples of amazing art created with the lowly Bic (or other such cheap pens), such as those I saw in the book The Art of Ballpoint by Matt Rota, that I wanted to try the medium myself. But after a week or so, I got fed up and switched back to the fountain pens and brush pens I’m more comfortable with.

It always bothered me, though, that I didn’t stick with it – after all, it’s only 31 days. So for InkTober 2018, I’m going to stick with ballpoint for the entire month, come hell or high water. Subject matter will be wide open – urban sketches, still lives, from imagination, from photos, whatever.

9/20/18 Bic Cristal, Field Notes Signature

I saw on social media that some people started gearing up early, so I did, too. Shown here are a couple of practice sketches I made a week ago or so. Both were done with ubiquitous Bic Cristals – a traditional favorite of ballpoint artists. The pen’s plastic body feels like it’s worth less than the 25 cents I paid for one, and the ink is blobby, especially in the 1.6mm tip size that I prefer. I’m not sure I’m going to make it through the month if I stick with these Cristals; I may switch to the Uni Jetstream I used a couple years ago on Ballpoint Pen Day.

I don’t plan to blog daily about my InkTober sketches; instead, I’ll report in every week or so as I did last year. I’ll also be posting sketches daily on Instagram.

Tell me what you are doing for InkTober 2018!

My Haiku and Sketches in Plumbago!

Published in Plumbago!

Who knew I still had some poems in me? 😉

Plumbago is a periodic ‘zine published by Andy Welfle, a co-host of the Erasable podcast about pencils. In issue No. 2 (now sold out) my blog post about the various ways I use Field Notes was republished. The just-released issue No.3 has a literary theme, so I submitted some urban sketches made with pencil and wrote a haiku to go with each. It’s been decades since I wrote any poems (I have a master’s degree in creative writing, but I stopped that kind of writing when I reached my 30s), so I did it as much as a personal challenge as anything else. Shown below are the three I submitted; the first two are published in Plumbago. 

All proceeds from this issue of Plumbago are being donated to victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

Graphite Weather

11/1/17 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Every year around this time, I start sketching more with graphite. The subtle tones of gray that are so easy to impart with a pencil seem to fit well with the flat light, overcast skies threatening rain, and the mostly colorless trees.

11/7/17 Montlake neighborhood

11/14/17 Montlake neighborhood

Yet just when I become wistful that most of the color in my neighborhood has blown away, I turn a corner, and I see a sudden spark of fire again.

11/15/17 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Vocabulary Homework

10/27/17

Last week Suzanne gave us a graphite class homework assignment that I was especially eager to do: sketches of different types of foliage – from life! Yes! After seven weeks of drawing only from photo references, we were finally instructed to look at actual trees and make small samples showing how the foliage differs among them. This assignment is intended to help us develop a wider “vocabulary” of marks that we can refer to when we need them. The purpose of having a broad vocabulary is to avoid resorting to drawing generic trees.

Of course, the best way to avoid drawing generic trees is to have as much knowledge as possible about specific types. Suzanne herself has an admirably vast arboreal knowledge, and just learning from her has helped me a bit in that regard. While I’m not interested in trees enough to study them in general, I do want to be able to identify at least the ones I encounter in my neighborhood, especially ones I’ve sketched, so that’s my goal now.

10/27/17

When I was at Swansons with USk, I was tempted by all the festive autumn décor, but I still hadn’t started the vocabulary assignment, and I knew the cloudless sky and sunshine would make the homework easier. I wandered around Swansons’ large property to the back lot where the nursery’s trucks and equipment are stored. A variety of trees grew right behind the lot. With only a 4B pencil, I tried to capture the essence of each tree by varying the marks and textures. As challenging as it is to draw trees by any means, compared to drawing them from photos, having live models felt like a piece of cake. (I was born to draw from life!)

At the bottom of the page is a photo I took. See if you can match my “vocabulary” sample with its model.

Product Review: Gekkoso 8B Pencil

7/8/17 Gekkoso 8B graphite pencil, colored pencil, Baron Fig notebook

Gekkoso is a 100-year-old art supply store in Tokyo that makes its own products. It breaks my heart that I didn’t know about it when I was shopping in the Ginza district two years ago – I was so close! Of course, I wasn’t sketching much with graphite back then, so even if I had been there, perhaps I wouldn’t have paid much attention to the Gekkoso 8B pencil (though being who I am, I can’t believe I would have walked out without one, even if I had no immediate plans for it).

Gekkoso 8B graphite pencil

By the time CW Pencil Enterprise’s Pencil Box subscription service included a Gekkoso 8B in last quarter’s box, it certainly did catch my attention. I’m not a subscriber, but fortunately, a couple of kind folks in the Erasable Facebook group were willing to trade me theirs.

A unique pencil, it’s also beautiful. With an understated Japanese esthetic, it has a clear, lightly varnished cedar finish with its name and – delightfully, if inexplicably – a French horn stamped in black. Although I normally use graphite more during the gray of winter, I have to say that this pencil is making me want to use it even during these colorful summer days.

My favorite graphite drawing pencils up to this point have been the ultra-soft grades of the Mitsubishi Hi-Uni line. When I compare the Gekkoso to a Hi-Uni 8B, the darkness is about the same. The Gekkoso’s core, however, is significantly thicker, as is its entire barrel, and that thicker core somehow makes it seem softer because I can lay down such a broad swath with its side. While the Hi-Uni is still slightly smoother, the Gekkoso applies effortlessly on both smooth and toothy papers, gliding on like pressure-sensitive liquid. When urban sketching with graphite, I typically use two grades – a mid-grade like a Blackwing or Hi-Uni 4B, and something super-soft like a Hi-Uni 10B. With the Gekkoso, though, I find I don’t need a mid-grade pencil because it’s so much fun to barely touch the paper for light lines. With firmer pressure, the dark is dark – and just as effortless. I think of it as charcoal – but smoother, cleaner and much more pleasant to use.

Despite being dark, it erases relatively well. In my sketch of the trees behind the utility pole, I drew the trees first, drew the outline of the pole over the trees, and then simply erased out the pole to bring it forward.

As you’d expect from such a soft core, it doesn’t hold a point for long, but if I keep turning it as I use it, it stays sharp long enough for several sketches. And that’s a good thing, because I haven’t found any portable sharpeners that will fit the large barrel. I use either a knife or the largest hole in my Bostitch electric.

Core and barrel size comparison, from left: Blackwing,
Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 8B, Gekkoso 8B

And speaking of that thicker barrel, it is truly comfortable compared to a conventional size pencil. None of my sketches so far has taken more than 20 minutes, but if I were making a drawing that required hours of work (as most of my colored pencil class studies did), I think I would be able to work longer with the Gekkoso before my hand got tired.

As all soft graphite does, it smears and transfers to the opposite sketchbook page. I’ve decided those are acceptable tradeoffs, though, for such a great drawing pencil. I take advantage of the softness by smudging with my finger for shading, and I leave the opposite sketchbook page blank. 

At six bucks a pop, it’s not a cheap pencil, nor is it easy to find (CW Pencil is the most obvious US source). But once I use up my traded stash, I have a feeling I’ll be getting more of these.

7/6/17 Gekkoso 8B, 140 lb. watercolor paper

7/3/17 Gekkoso 8B, colored pencil, Baron Fig notebook

Tree Times Three

7/5/17 Gekkoso 8B graphite pencil, Baron Fig notebook

While the sunny side of Green Lake Park was getting on towards the low 80s, I found a lovely shady spot under the trees that was very comfortable, so I decided to try something I rarely do. I know that many painters make a value study, sometimes nothing more than a thumbnail, before they begin a painting. I spotted a composition of trees that appealed to me, but before I took out my colored pencils, I got out a soft graphite pencil and made a value study of the scene (above).  

Feeling like I understood the values, I got out my water-soluble colored pencils and went to town on the same scene (below). I decided to skip the cars in the background and keep it simple.

7/5/17 water-soluble colored pencils, 140 lb. watercolor paper

7/5/17 Gekkoso 8B graphite

I had sprayed water all over the foliage to activate the color, so while I waited for that to dry before continuing, I thought I’d work on another value study. In fact, the color version was taking so long (total of about one hour, interrupted in the middle by the second pencil sketch) that the sun had moved around the foreground tree, giving it a slim band of light on the left side. I wish I had waited a bit before starting the color version because I would have liked to put that band of light in (I only saw a tiny sliver of light when I had started the color version). 

Of the three, I think I like the last value study best. Which do you like?

Highland Drive, Kerry Park and Pure Sunshine

 

6/23/27 Gekkoso 8B graphite pencil

Parsons Garden and the garden’s area of upper Queen Anne Hill have been a favorite of USk Seattle for several years; they’ve become a summer staple. I think the first time we met there was on the 4th of July in 2014. Looking back at that post, I see that I sketched two of the same scenes yesterday as I did then – Highland Drive’s romantic curving wall of globe lamps, and the spectacular viewpoint at Kerry Park.

I’ve sketched Highland Drive with a twig, and ink and watercolor more than once, but I’d never used graphite at that location, so I pulled out my Gekkoso 8B. Kate was sketching a short distance up the drive. She started in the shade, but by the time I put her into the sketch, her bright yellow blouse was blazing as bright as the sun.

6/23/17 colored pencils, ink

Kerry Park and its dazzling Space Needle-centered skyline is another view I’ve sketched several times, but it’s never been as crowded as it was yesterday. Entire buses and cars periodically disgorged tourists, who rushed up to snap photos of each other in front of the Needle and Mt. Rainier. Instead of working around people blocking my view, I moved to a particularly popular spot for group photos. As mothers ordered their kids into neat rows and couples pulled out selfie sticks, I felt a bit snarky and wanted to shout, “Sure, it’s lovely today, but you should have been here the prior 10 months like the rest of us! We didn’t get this free – we earned it!” 

But I was in such a good mood that I didn’t care. Really, who could blame them when this is what they were looking at:

Brush Pen and Brush Pencil at Gas Works

6/22/17 Sailor brush pen, Gekkoso 8B pencil, ink

There’s something about those weird, industrial, almost abstract structures at Gas Works Park that invites me to be bolder and more experimental.

6/22/17 brush pen, ink

Yesterday I was in a brush pen mood, so I started with my “hairy” Sailor Profit brush pen to sketch the fully backlit gas works (above). When it was time to put in the strong shadows, I wanted to distinguish them from the silhouetted gas works themselves, so I grabbed the next darkest, boldest implement in my bag: a super-soft (8B grade) Gekkoso graphite pencil. Finally, I used my usual Sailor fude fountain pen to put in a few details.

For my second sketch of some different gas works (at right), I used the brush pen and fountain pen only.

I was also in the mood to sketch a tree portrait (which I enjoy doing, though I don’t do it often). Unlike some Seattle parks, Gas Works is ringed by large masses of trees but without isolated trees within the park that are easy to see individually. On my way out of the park, I finally found one near the parking lot that seemed like a good portrait exercise. I’ve been rather enamored lately with that Gekkoso pencil (I used it for the first time the other day on the unexpected lion fountain in my neighborhood), so I pulled it out again for the tree. 

I’ll probably write a full review of the Gekkoso one of these days. . . it’s a very interesting pencil. Although it’s not called a “brush pencil” as the Uni Mitsubishi 10B is, I would put it in the same category of very soft, extra-thick cores.

6/22/17 Gekkoso 8B pencil

Lions in the ‘Hood

6/19/17 Gekkoso 8B pencil

I often cruise around my neighborhood – on foot when the weather is favorable, by car when it’s not – looking for a sketch. Most of what I see is predictable and commonplace. Imagine my surprise when I happened upon a large, ornate, three-tiered fountain surrounded by lion heads on each tier. The house was set back a bit from the sidewalk, and the fountain was in front, water pouring from each lion’s mouth. I saw these often in Italy and France, but rarely in Seattle, and never in little ol’ Maple Leaf. 

Once I got over my shock, I pulled out a pencil. Maybe one of these days I’ll bring my stool, settle in for an hour or two and sketch the whole thing – all 12 lion heads.

Follow-Up Review: Baron Fig Paper

Baron Fig Vanguard: standard edition at left (the plain gray covered
with my own stickers) and the limited-edition Infinity.

Ever since I supported its Kickstarter campaign several years ago, New York stationery maker Baron Fig has captured my attention on and off. The hardbound Confidant I initially reviewed held more promise than usefulness, but I was happy that I held onto it. Nearly two years later when I became interested in sketching with graphite, that notebook’s paper turned out to be one of my favorites.

Spotting my review about graphite sketching, Andi at Baron Fig got in touch asking permission to tweet it. I mentioned that I was considering trying a more portable softcover Vanguard, and she kindly offered to send me one in the same A5-ish Flagship size. (She also sent an Archer pencil, which had been recently released.) All winter as I sketched the graphite-gray landscape, the Vanguard became my everyday-carry pencil sketchbook.

Fast-forward to a couple of months ago, when Ana at the Well-Appointed Desk noted that the paper in the limited Black Box edition had changed – it was now toothier and more creamy than white. I was actually fond of the old Vanguard’s slightly-but-not-overly-toothy surface, so I wasn’t sure if I’d find the change to be an improvement or not. A short time later, the next Vanguard limited-edition Infinity came out, and I was curious enough about the new paper to order one.

Initially I was a little disappointed by the additional tooth, but I got over that quickly because I discovered other differences that were definite improvements. I ran through my usual battery of media tests – graphite, water-soluble colored pencil, fountain pen, brush pen, Pitt marker. Although the weight (unspecified by BF) feels the same, the new paper has more sizing, so the water-soluble materials washed nicely when brushed lightly with water instead of sinking into the paper immediately. On the old paper, the reverse side shows a little bleed-through where I gave the scribbles a wash. The new paper shows almost nothing. The paper is still not intended for wet media, of course, so the page buckled where I got it wet, but not too badly.

Old paper

New paper

 

Old paper (reverse)

New paper (reverse)

Perhaps a more significant consequence of this paper change is greater durability where the binding is stitched. When sketching on location with a softcover sketchbook, my habit is to fold the side that I’m not using backward, making the book easier to hold with one hand. When I did that with the old Vanguard, I noticed that the pages would tear away a bit from the stitching, especially near the bottom. I’m not seeing that at all with the new Vanguard. Perhaps the binding is exactly the same, but the paper might be slightly stronger, so it’s not tearing from the stress of bending the page away from the stitching.

Old binding

New binding

Incidentally, one thing I really appreciate about all of Baron Fig’s notebooks (hardcover and softcover) is that the bindings open completely flat, which makes them easier to use as well as scan.

Tombow marker on new Vanguard paper

Since the paper is not appropriate for heavy washes, I wouldn’t make the Vanguard my standard, everyday sketchbook. But now that I know the paper can stand up to various media besides graphite, I’m using it more. Last month when I took Sue Heston’s urban sketching workshop, she had suggested tonal markers, so I grabbed pigment-ink-based Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens and water-based Tombow Dual Brush markers to use in the new Vanguard. The paper held up to both types of markers beautifully with no bleed-through at all, even where I applied the markers solidly. (I don’t have any alcohol-based markers to test, but I’m guessing they would still bleed through.) It’s great for fountain pen line drawings washed lightly for shading, too.

While the gray cover, standard edition Vanguard is available in a choice of rulings, including blank, the limited-edition Infinity is available only with dot-grid ruling. (Strangely, the pale gray dots apparently resist water-based marker ink, because the dots show up white. The Pitt markers obscured the dots completely.)

The standard edition pocket-size Vanguard is also available with blank paper. Hmmm . . . that might be worth trying now.

Updated 5/30/17: Baron Fig just came out with a limited-edition Vanguard called Clear Sky. Not only are the covers beautiful – the paper inside is blank! I’m going to grab some before they sell out.

Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens

Fountain pen ink and colored pencil