My First Moleskine

I go to a monthly artist meetup at the Blick Art Store in Wheaton, IL. On my second visit, this past weekend, I was graciously given a free Moleskine and assorted other supplies by the owner, and a talented bloke in his own right, Kevin.

Now, it’s pretty common knowledge that I draw digitally. I’ve done a scant amount of traditional work, mostly relegated to doodles with ballpoint pens and the like. Going to this forum and talking with guys like Alex Wald, Dave Dorman, and Charlie Athanas had me curious, though. Might I be missing out on a lot?

So, I was really happy to get the little package of goodies from Kevin. It left me no excuse to avoid something new (I’d often balked at the $10+ price of Moleskines in the past - but have no problem saving up for a new Cintiq, heh!). I went about making a sketch or two with a 5mm mechanical pencil, but decided that I wanted to try for lots of value changes, and I suspect that wasn’t the right tool for the job.

I stopped back into the store a few days later, and Kevin fielded some painfully stupid questions. “What’s a 2H pencil and why do I want it?,” probably was the worst. He directed me to a few things, I bought a couple pencils, and continued home, the pencils burning a hole in my pocket for the next hour and half of driving.

These images are the first attempts with graphite or, really, any traditional value work. Only a few minutes a piece, half mechanical pencil, half 2H regular (regular?) pencil.

The Moleskine’s paper quality was really great. I even got one with predetermined panels for storyboarding/comic roughs. I was a bit trepidatious to jump into traditional work (I’m so back asswards), but I’m really glad I gave it a go. It’s exciting to get to draw everywhere I go, and I can’t afford a portable tablet laptop while saving for the Cintiq, so this fits that niche nicely.

Is it wrong that the prevailing thought while working with pencil was, “This works just like the pressure sensitive, flat variant of the pencil tool in Painter!” heh?