Re: Drawing tools

[John Conway <john_conway@mac.com>]

This is the last post to the DML I am doing to make on this subject. 
Feel free to send the hate-mail off-list. :-)

Let me make this clear, hard pencils can produce good effects in the 
hands of experienced artists, but I think soft pencils will always do 
better.

The big advantage of soft pencils (apart from the beautiful natural 
textures they produce) is that they are dark enough to be reproduced 
without substantial brightness/contrast correction. Reproduction is 
obviously very important in palaeoart.

Soft pencils are fine for detailed work, they just have to be sharpened 
more often. The following drawing was done with 3 - 6Bs, and is as 
detailed as any hard-pencil work I have seen:

http://homepage.mac.com/john_conway/daspleto-styraco.jpg

(Watch out, it's quite big, to show off the detail.)

I have said all I can, on and off-list. I am all alone, and I am 
exhausted. I can see myself now; hopelessly tying to fend off you horrid 
hard-pencil freaks; my beautiful soft pencils crumbling on your thick 
reptilian hides, while you stab me to death with your cold, hard, 
heartless drawing sticks. :-)

John Conway, Palaeoartist

"All art is quite useless." - Oscar Wilde

Protosite: http://homepage.mac.com/john_conway/
Systematic ramblings: http://homepage.mac.com/john_conway/phylogenetic/