The Blackwing is Extinct!
Dec. 17th, 2002 04:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashFound this amusing story via boingboing.net.
The Blackwing was a pencil that went out of production in the end of the nineties; I'd discovered them only a little earlier and was sad to see them go. This, however, is about people who have virtually turned it into a fetish object.
I'm not entirely guiltless; I still have one unsharpened Blackwing in my box of assorted fresh pencils. At Spümcø, Jim Smith stuck the stub of his last one (or one of his last ones) up on a bulletin board with a note reading 'The Blackwing is Extinct!'.
Things like this are why one friend of mine set out to learn to use the dirt cheap pencils you can buy ten for a dollar at the drugstore. And why I do so much of my color work digitally. What artist in the furry community, with the cultural love affair with art markers, doesn't have a horror story of their favorite markers vanishing?
Oh, my current favorite drawing tool is the Dixon Ticonderoga, in 2.5B ("medium") and 1B ("soft"). Maybe I should stock up in case of corporate nonsense.
The Blackwing was a pencil that went out of production in the end of the nineties; I'd discovered them only a little earlier and was sad to see them go. This, however, is about people who have virtually turned it into a fetish object.
I'm not entirely guiltless; I still have one unsharpened Blackwing in my box of assorted fresh pencils. At Spümcø, Jim Smith stuck the stub of his last one (or one of his last ones) up on a bulletin board with a note reading 'The Blackwing is Extinct!'.
Things like this are why one friend of mine set out to learn to use the dirt cheap pencils you can buy ten for a dollar at the drugstore. And why I do so much of my color work digitally. What artist in the furry community, with the cultural love affair with art markers, doesn't have a horror story of their favorite markers vanishing?
Oh, my current favorite drawing tool is the Dixon Ticonderoga, in 2.5B ("medium") and 1B ("soft"). Maybe I should stock up in case of corporate nonsense.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-17 05:33 pm (UTC)I've noticed that marker brands don't really go away; they're just reincarnated in ever more expensive variations.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-17 08:06 pm (UTC)This article also seems to have a little of the 'if I get the same tools the pros use, then I will be just as good!' attitude to it... They were, admittedly, very nice pencils, but I wouldn't pay twenty bucks for a box of them.