Homage to the Ball-Point Pen

Ah, the ball point pen. So cheap, advertisers find the advertising worth more than the pen, so many of my drawings have been done with a freebie. How many drawings have I done with a white plastic bic, emblazoned with the blue text of a bank or hotel? Many. There are so many things I could say about the simple, humble ball point pen. I prefer it to an art pen, because I can control the value of the mark and because it is cheaper. I love the feel of a simple ball point writing on the most basic sketch or printer paper. I like the smell of the ink. Accidentally, I've even tasted ball point pen ink. So intensely have I looked at a ball point and it's ink, taken them apart, studied the blobs coming out of the little interior straw that holds the ink, I can tell you the black ink is actually a very dark red or occasionally a dark purple or blue. I prefer the ball point to pencil as well, because with pencil I know I can correct my mark, so I'm less free, I think too much, I get intense, I make too dark a mark. It's a leap of faith. Life is like drawing in ball point pen: You can control the value, but you can't erase.

I would like to spend an artist residency with nothing available to me but simple sketch paper and as box of black bic pens. The cheap, simple ones, not the darker, smoother ones that are more expensive.

If I were to go back over the entire arc of my art career, even back to my childhood, I would find drawings in pen or pencil of characters. I've been doing character sketches since I was 12, maybe earlier, but only lately decided to recognize that they were character sketches. The following is scarcely 5 of the most recent character sketches selected from my sketchbook. I added them to my website and will continue to add them as I find some of the old ones and create new ones.

Recently I decided to start filling my sketchbook using the medium I love to make the drawings I love. It's so fast and relaxing that I hardly consider it a distraction from the rest of my work. It can be a relaxing and productive replacement for decompressing on a video game or Facebook. At best, the drawings may be preliminary sketches for future puppets and animations. Or become comics or animations themselves. I'd like to do an entire graphic novel in ball point some day. No pencil pre-drawing. Just a leap of faith.

Here are the best of the last week of drawings. As I find dig out more or draw more I'll add them. Hope you like them!