The usual tools

So, a quick list (and sample) of the usual stuff I use for my usual sketching exercises.

I have a few more things, but these are the basic ones: all off them easy to get, relatively cheap and great to work with in my opinion.

The basic, cheap, yellow and black Staedtler Noris pencils are a staple of my school days. It is fair to say I have been using these all my life. They are very consistent, so I never get any surprises when I use them and come in handy packs of B, HB, H for about 2€. They are smooth writers and leave a good consistent line. I find the H just perfect for those initial lines and the HB is great for shading. I find the B nice for some deeper shadows and filling the iris'.
Overall I use these all the time - a lot more than I go for the Lumograph tin - so while not the best pencil you can get quality wise, they are the best thing I have when I just want to doodle and sketch without concern for the cost or if the result looks good or bad. If I think about it, that makes them the best!

As for the mechanical pencils:

The Parker 45 Flighter twist pencil is great. Heavy, with the 0.9 lead, it can do very fine lines or heavy shading with the AIN pentel leads.
Note that this is more of a writing tool than a sketching tool, so the lead has some play: it moves a bit up and down when you sketch with it.

The Kuro Toga 0.5 is light and easy to use. The whole "always sharp" feels like a gimmick, considering 0.5 is a very fine line, but it handles well and I think makes the little details really pop out: things like eyelashes and cross hatching look good. The Faber leads glide well and the lines have a nice texture to it.

The 788 is also an old companion. It was my father's clutch pencil and works like a plastic pencil. The Bic leads rival the Staedler B pencil in darkness, although they feel a little greasier than it.
I really feel like I should use it more, but I don't go immediately for it when doodling. I use it mostly for adding some line weight.

The Staedler fineliner... nice and cheap. Black enough, fine enough... I still prefer the Derwent or the Sakura (I'll go through my impressions of those later), but it's serviceable enough and at 4€ per 3 pens it is good value.

So, last, for a comparison of the progression with everyday practice:

In January

Now:

Not a great improvement, but I guess some is better than none.

New Hobbies - Sketching, drawing and comics.

I've been away from the blog for ages and, to be perfectly honest, I've been from most of the usual stuff I do: writing has been hard (to be honest I'm stuck at 21891 words and 37 pages on yet another attempted novel and stalled, can't seem to find a game that catches my attention, etc...), so I tried to find something which catches my interest and gets me going.

Now, let me be honest, I'm the kind of person who picks up hobbies, obsesses over them for a few months and then drops them, so nowadays I try to be careful about the upfront investment needed.

This time I picked up drawing, which is nice for the budget: most of the stuff I have laying around. All around all I bought was a set of Staedtler Lumographs ranging from 6B to 4H, some Sakura microns and Sakura Koi coloring pens on sale.

So, while I probably won't be sharing the sketches - I am REALLY bad at this and all I care is getting to the point where I can draw some passably nice comicbook faces - I'll leave the impressions on the stuff I got and whatever insight I get as I fumble around with this.

So, I'll start with the list of the stuff I'm using:
-Staedtler 788 clutch pencil (it was my dad's and I used it all through college;
-Bic HB 2mm leads;
-Parker 45 flighter 0.9mm mechanical pencil;
-Pentel HB 0.9mm leads;
-old and cracked Maped 2 hole pencil sharpener;
-Staedtler Noris pencils (H, HB, B);
-Sakura Microns Sepia (01, 05, 1, Brush pen);
-Sakura Koi pack of flesh tones;
-Staedtler Lumographs set of 12;
-Platinum #3776 M nib fountain pen - it works and I love it for some stuff;
-Mitsubishi E-Knock pencil rubber;
-a cheap something or other vinyl rubber I had on my desk;

Right now I'm looking around for all sorts of tutorials on the web, and I've caught some interesting things. And just the continuous practice gets improvements, that much is true.

I read somewhere on the web (www.mangatutorials.com - no afilliation whatsoever) that copying work is a good way to improve. So far I'd say it has worked at least to give me ideas on how to draw some stuff. Mostly I've been looking over my comic book favorite artists: Michael Turner, Jim Lee, Joe Madureira, Adam warren, among others.
I also keep looking for any pencil sketches I can find on the web, blatantly stealing what I can.

The result?

Better now, but still awful!