Ninja Sketching Demo 5.5 min Video

Sketching tools: Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 10B for warm up sheet. Pentel Black Polymer 999 HB drawing pencil for the figure skeleton. Sanford Design Ebony for further details. Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen with a brush nib for inking. Sakura block style eraser XREC-100 for clean up of stray lines. Pretty much selected these tools at random from my desk, and the main practical observation would be that the Design Ebony pencil marks did not erased completely after several passes with the eraser. Thus the soft Ebony lead should probably be reserved for the later stages of a drawing once the proper proportions and under structure have been worked out.
Support: Xerox Premium Multipurpose 24 lb paper.
Demo Video: 5.5 min long.

Sanford Design Ebony 14420 Drawing Pencil Doodle tests and video

We'll take a look at another sketching tool that got lost in the shuffle shortly after it was acquired: the Sanford Design Ebony 14420 Drawing Pencil carded 2-pack. The pencils were labeled "Jet Black Extra Smooth" and certainly lived up to this claim.
When compared side by side, the Design Ebony drawing pencil and the dark Derwent Onyx pencil produced fairly similar dark sample swatches. All swatches were prone to some smudging given the softness of the leads. The Ebony lead was slightly more difficult to erase than the Onyx leads which were also shinnier.2-minute sketching demo video.
The Sanford Design Ebony drawing pencil would make a fine addition to the sketching kits of artists that enjoy soft pencil leads and don't mind a bit of smudging. Worth trying and fairly easy to find in the drafting section of office supplies stores.

Pilot G-2 Ultra-Fine Point Retractable Gel Ink Rolling Ball Pen doodle test and video

Found this carded set of 0.38 mm retractable gel ink rolling ball pens buried in one of my storage drawers, and finally got around testing them. The original G-2 pens with a medium-size point used to be my writing pens of choice for many years.
Pen close up. Comfortable functional design with no cap to loose. Ink dried quickly and resisted smearing which should keep left-handed users happy.
Doodle test drawn on Xerox 24 lb paper. Pen was quite smooth for such a small pen nib.
Video of doodle and water resistance tests. The Pilot G-2 0.38 mm ultra-fine point wrote smoothly and worked nicely for sketching in a small Rhodia No. 11 pad while I volunteered at the bottle water station at the Art Fair yesterday. Outdoors in the humid Florida weather, stray water from condensation readily smeared the G-2 ink doodles. Yet in this video the freshly made gel ink sketch proved fairly water-resistant. Thus make sure to test the water resistance of sketches drawn with this gel pen before coloring them with wet media.

Uniball Signo 207 Doodle Test

On a whim picked up an Uniball Signo 207 retractable gel pen on sale at the Staples check out register yesterday. Found it a tad odd that I never got around trying this gel pen before considering that they seem to be readily available everywhere in the USA.
Quick doodle and writing test on a Rhodia pad.
The smooth gel ink performance allowed for quick sketching, and I expected that its advertised fraud-resistant ink formulation would make it suitable for coloring with wet media like Sakura Koi watercolors. Yet given the pen medium size tip, the ink went down thicker in some areas taking longer to dry. Thus there was some light smudging on the yellow parts of the helmet and arms of the shortest alien.
The Uniball Signo 207 retractable gel pen makes for an easy-to-find sketching tool that works adequately with watercolors so long as the gel ink sketches are allowed enough time to dry completely. Quite an efficient writing tool as well.In case you were wondering about the source of inspiration for this test sketch, it was the Clone Wars Embo action figure. While I have pretty much stopped collecting them of late, a highly detailed alien bounty hunter wearing an Asian cone hat and wielding kunai knives is not something I could pass up.

Holiday Gift Guide Flashback

My suggestions for gift art supplies pretty much remain the same from last year, so feel free to check or re-visit the 2009 list of my top 10 categories for basic sketching supplies. Under "Premium wooden pencils", I would include the recently released Palomino Blackwing. For "Watercolor kits", I would also recommend a customized selection of Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolor Sticks or a set of Faber Castell Albrecht Durer Aquarelle Sticks.

Make your Vote count!

Put aside your art supplies for a moment and get to your local precinct before the polls close.