Jeremy from Loud Style has caught the pencil blog even more than the last time we checked in.

My little collection has grown quite a bit in the past six months. Since my last blog post about pencils is the most visited page on this site (after the homepage of course), I decided to write about them again.

My favorite pencils are often the natural, unpainted variety of incense cedar pencils. A nice coat of varnish is fine — completely bare is even better. The details and my opinions of the pencils pictured are below.

Read on about natural pencils such as the Blackfeet Indian, Musgrave, Forest Choice, Mongol and more!

Once again, comments will go unmoderated, and email will be on hold until I return home late Tuesday night from my trip. Apologies for tardiness (again).

[Image and text, L.S. Used with permission.]

We are happy to be able to post some work from artist Graham McArthur from Australia, along with an essay on pencils:

For as long as I can remember I have loved to write and draw and for as long as I can remeber the pencil has always remained my first choice for both writing and drawing.

There is nothing like a good pencil, and I can’t think of a more versatile, immediate or interesting medium. Being so universally familar and easy to use makes the pencil the most immediately accesible tool for most people. Used mainly as a linear writing or drawing instrument, the graphite pencil is very much at ease creating tone and textural effects as well as implied colour. It is these properties in particular that interest me the most. The availability and range of pencils seen today makes the medium more attractive than ever before providing unlimited potential for an open mind and inventive imagination.There is great joy to be had in spending endles hours gently persuading the pencil to leave its silky grey tones on delicious paper. The implied colour of graphite can be enhanced with a restrained use of a single coloured pencil creating a sense of mystery and inviting the imagination of the viewer to create more implied colours in the mind’s eye.

As a semi-retired illustrator my work these days is just for fun and self indulgence. I no longer try to please the client or the unknown viewer. I still like to paint and to experiment with a variety of media. However, without the restraints placed on me by the brief, I find that I am being drawn more and more to the simple but incredibly and wonderfully expressive nature of the most versitile medium of them all. Long live the pencil.

Many thanks to Graham, whose blog — featuring lots of great artwork — you can check out at Eidolon.

[Image and text, G.M. Used with kind permission.]

Dave sent us this post about his experience with Staedtler’s great customer service:

It’s fair to say that my emails to customer services at various pencil companies have produced a fairly consistent response. That is, deafening silence, no response whatsoever. But there is one exception to that rule, namely Staedtler. Both German HQ and their Australian subsidiary have promptly replied to my enquiries. Staedtler Australia even airmailed me their CD “Facts about Pencils” in response to a simple enquiry, and the covering note was personally signed by the CEO, so they obviously take customer relations very seriously.

It looks to me like their CD “Facts about Pencils” is aimed at children around the 8 to 10 year old age bracket. It opens with the question “Have you ever wondered where your pencil comes from?” accompanied by the raucous sounds of the Australian bush and a friendly cartoon kangaroo and koala bear. Then 5 short movies take you through the pencil manufacturing process:

• Where Do Pencils Come From?

• The ‘Unleaded Pencil’

• Shaping the Pencil

• Painting the Pencil

• Labelling & Packaging the Pencil

There is also a “Student Workbook – Teachers Aid” section, and two bonus movies obviously from Staedtler Germany. One movie is about erasers, the other pencils - who would have guessed how erasers were so important in teenage love?

It was good to watch the movies to see all the automated machinery producing pencils by the zillion - pencil leads and erasers just being continuously squeezed out and chopped to length. I was particularly interested to see the painting process and how they get the pin-striping and other effects. The German movie mentions that Staedtler’s two manufacturing plants in Germany produce 1.7 million pencils per day.

Many thanks to Dave!

[Image, D.P. and Staedtler.  Used with permission.]

Shane from Utah sent in some great photos of a very beautiful pencil extender:

Here is my favorite pencil extender. The main advantage to this extender is that it is hollow its entire length, unlike most extenders which have a solid handle attached to a clutch. Because of this extender’s design, you can also use it as a protector or holder for even a full-length pencil without adding any significant length to the protected pencil. I carry a fully protected pencil in my pocket and use it down to the nub.

I cannibalized the pocket clip from a Pentel mechanical pencil to trick out one of the extenders and help it ride my shirt pocket more safely. The clip also prevents rolling on the desk.

I bought these beauties at the Kinokuniya Japanese book store in San Francisco, and I’ve seen them at the Kinokuniya in Seattle. They were $4.15 for the pair. I have not been able to find how to order these online, but physical store locations are linked at http://www.kinokuniya.com/. Maybe PencilThings or another supplier can get a stock of these and make them accessible online to our comrades everywhere? Looks like the manufacturer is Kutsuwa.

Visit Shane’s new blog Scrawler Tap!

[Text and images, S.T. Used with kind permission.]

Devoted Comrade Dave in New Zealand recently made a week-long experiment with wooden pencils, a foray away from the mechanical pencils he so excellently writes about on his new and very well-written blog:

Now whilst my main interest is mechanical pencils, I am certainly not immune to the charms of wooden pencils, so I thought that it was time to put my mechanicals away and have a “wooden week”.

Anyone visiting a selection of shops here in New Zealand would quickly get the impression that Staedtler was the market giant, with Faber-Castell a fairly distant second, and so I decided to trial three Staedtlers and two Faber-Castells.

I chose the following HB grade pencils as a reasonable selection of different price ranges, qualities and designs:

Monday - Staedtler (Australia) Pacific 830
Tuesday - Staedtler (Australia) Tradition 110
Wednesday - Staedtler Mars Lumograph 100 (Made in Germany)
Thursday - Faber-Castell Grip 2001 (Made in Germany)
Friday - Faber-Castell Goldfaber 1221 (Country of origin not identified)

Read the rest of the results here.

[Image, D.P.  Used with kind permission.]

Woodchuck recently wrote about pencil certification on Timberlines, and it would be very good to get some feedback on that post on the topic of pencil certification:

Later this week I’m attending the Annual Meeting of the U.S. Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association (WIMA). Participants include finished product manufacturers and marketers with operations in the US as well as component suppliers. I used to look forward to this event each year as an important chance to get together with key customers, other businesses and friends in the pencil and writing instrument industry. Coming from a family business background I can remember attending one of the former Pencil Makers Association meetings with my parents when I was still in High School and later after college before I had joined the family business…

….In the meantime I remain interested in consumer feedback on this particular issue. Do you place any more value on such third party certification programs, industry sponsored or not? Do you view a PMA, EN71 (European standard) or ACMI certified product as safer than one without one of these certifications? Does it bear any relevance in your purchase decision at all?”

Please check out the rest of Woodchuck’s post, and please leave a comment or two there about what pencil certification means to you: “Do Industry Associations Matter Anymore?”

R. E. Wolf sent us a link to some great work, including this artistamp, “Commemorating the 1966 Pencil Uprising.” You can check out more of his work at his site, Variance Art.

[Image, R.E.W.  Used with kind persmission.]

Our Comrade at Ninth Wave Designs writes about her quest for the perfect pencil, a hybrid of several great pencils around presently:

“I have been piecing together the perfect pencil in my mind lately, exhuming the parts from the assortment of good pencils I regularly use to create the ultimate writing tool.  In order to create the perfect all-around pencil I first need to harvest a few parts.  My goal here is a pencil that would be highly functional for day-to-day use, comfortable for writing for longer periods of time, and not too specialized (i.e., it doesn’t also have to be the best sketching pencil)…

….I don’t expect I will ever find a pencil that possesses all the qualities I have stitched together here, but it is fun to dream of the perfect pencil. In reality what is perfect would vary from person to person and job to job, so it would be impossible to accomplish this for everyone.  Until my Frankenpencil is given life by a pencil manufacturer (It’s alive, it’s aliiiiiive!), I will just have to be happy with the variety of pencils I have on hand.”

Read the rest of the post here.

[Images and text, N.W.D.  Used with kind permission.]

But we hit the 100,000 visit mark over the weekend, on Sunday! That’s a tenth of a million Comrades since the end of July. Thanks to all People who spread the Word of the pencil and our Revolution! This is a sign of how devoted to the pencil are the People of this Revolution.

And to whomever searched for information about something pencil-ish in Russellville, Arkansas (where my friend and colleague is from) at Arkansas Tech University and wound up here as the 100,000th visitor, Congratulations! You can claim your prize if you contact us with what you searched for, so we know it’s you:)

We’ve added a “Contact” form, linked to in the sidebar. The email link had to be taken down due to dozens and dozens of spam messages clogging up the mailbox. Hopefully, this will work a little better for everyone.

Finally, I hope the new theme works better in folks’ browsers and that it’s easier to read than the other Wordpress theme. It’s much more akin to the Blogger version we had. And much more pencilicious.

[Image, J.G.]

Dave from New Zealand sent us this cool graphic that I can’t say I’ve seen before. But’s a sentiment known very well in the Revolution. I wish we could find whoever created it so that we could get permission to put it on a T-shirt. Lead-ittes;)
Too bad there’s no way to blog with pencil, a way that wouldn’t require a computer to read. Now that would be cool. Print doesn’t allow the timely responses on ongoing discussion that the web does, though, or at least not all responses. Letters to the Editor get cut, pasted and — above all — chosen. I suppose the web might be one of the few (if not only) mediums where we all have a voice. Nonetheless, there’s something amenic about the net sometimes, and something so organic about pencils. Just something…

Dave also has a new blog where he’s writing about his mechanical pencil collection. The most recent is of the Yard-O-Led Deco 34:

“The all silver square body and uncommon looks of this mechanical pencil make it stand out from your everyday office pens and pencils. Twist action top to advance or retract lead. Extra leads stored individually inside the body, 12 x 3 inch leads making the ‘yard of lead’.”

Read on. Thanks to Dave for the graphic, and best wishes on his new blogging venture.

[Images, D.P. Used with permission.]

We have a few reviews in the queue and a profile on a talented artist, but we’ve fallen behind in the transfer from Blogger to Wordpress. Blogger is great, but we will have greater flexibility with Wordpress now that we’ve become more of a community than just a blog about pencils. Apologies for anyone who tried to access the site today without success, as it was down for an hour or two while the switch was being finalized.

Everything has been saved and/or transferred — all posts, comments, etc. Now commenting will be easier.

The feed may or may not be down. I honestly don’t know. If anyone would like to let us know either way via email, we’d appreciate it.

Our masthead was sort of through together in a few minutes by myself, so we hope to have a better one in place shortly, perhaps shifting them around regularly.

Thanks for your patience, and normal posting will begin this week, ASAP.

We’ve been very very lucky to constantly get awesome submissions from Comrades of the Revolution: links, photos, drawings, essays, reviews, etc. We cannot be more thankful for this. But it turns out that we have been remiss not only in not expressing this gratitute, but also in providing any kind of guidelines for submissions. This became obvious when several Comrades have asked about the guidelines for submissions lately — very justifiably. We are always very happy with the submissions we get, and I only decided to take the time to write up some guidelines in order to encourage more people to submit if they feel so inclined, not to express any kind of displeasure with the wonderful things folks have always been so kind to send in to us. So I personally apologize if there are folks who wanted to submit but did not because they did not know how or what sorts of guidelines we have. We will keep a link to these guidelines in the right column indefinitely, too.

Without further ado:

Pencil Revolution Submission Guidelines

1) For links, emailing is best so that we see it right away. If you have a site or blog we can link to, please let us know.

2) For visual art, the only guideline for content is that it involves pencils in some small way and common sense in a big way. While we will not censor art that contains nudity or violence, please don’t send us pornography or images for which someone else owns the rights, etc. For formatting sake, we appreciate the original (if possible) photo or a large scan of an analog image so that we can format it for the page and upload it to our server.

3) For written work, any genre, format or topic is very welcome. Poems, stories and essays about pencils, written with pencils — these all certainly apply. While we would rather not censor anyone, please be thoughtful and considerate of all the Comrades of the Revolution.

4) For reviews, we do have some specific guidelines. However, to save space, if you would like to review something for Pencil Revolution, please email us (see right column) first. This is both to get the guidelines for the type of gear you’d like to review (pencil, eraser, sharpener, etc.) and to see if the gear you’d like to review is something we are really in a position to publish a review of presently. For instance, if we were to publish too many Faber-Castell or Dixon reviews too close together and in a disproportion to the other gear we review, we would certainly be unbalanced and would sacrifice some credibility thereby.

Nonetheless, if you’d like to review something from a manufacturer for which we have published several reviews, please contact us, and we can arrange a future date for submission or publication, etc. We don’t want to discourage anyone from writing reviews, just from appearing to play favorites. And besides, the things we choose to review do not necessarily reflect preferences anyway. We’ve had some negative reviews, and that’s a good thing if we expect anyone to trust the things we say:)

For all submissions, we reserve the right to re-format, edit or reject whatever we feel is inappropriate for Pencil Revolution. Other than re-formatting some photos, we’ve never had to do this before, and we doubt we ever will have to.

While we’re talking about reviews, there are some for the near future which we would eagerly like to publish, and we invite one to all to contact us if you’d like to review any of the following sometime soon, this winter or spring:

Staedtler Mars Lumograph 100 (drawing or writing); other Staedtler products.
Erasers! Erasers! Erasers!
Sanford Prismacolor Turquoise (drawing or writing).
Various kinds of art pencils (colored pencils, watercolor pencils, pastel pencils, etc.).
And of course, suggestions from Comrades.

We have such a talented community, we’re hoping that some artists and writers and thinkers can share the wisdom of some specific pencils and related goodies.

Myriad thanks to everyone who has shared something with us so far, be it a link, a review, an essay, a photo or drawing — we are thankful for everything!

Good news on the Palomino front: the arrival of mixed packs and the enigmatic blue Palomino. Yes, orange has a run for its money.

We received a question a few weeks ago from a gentleman who asked how we would convert an environmentalist to pencils, given that pencils are made from trees. We passed the request on to our ever-wise Woodchuck, and he has written the first of a series of posts on the subject. Be sure to visit here.

And we certainly invite one and all to check out our always-evolving list of links of Pencil Heros in the right column. Our linking philosophy is not exactly explicit, but we know it when we see it. Etc.

Update:

Check out part two of Woodchuck’s environmental posts.

[Image, Woodchuck. Used with permission.]

Today marks the two year anniversary of Moleskinerie. Without Armand’s help, Pencil Revolution would never have gotten off the ground. We wish nothing but the best for our friends at the esteemed M-nation! Congratulations!

Pencil holders that stab a little creature in their use?

We’ve been called “gentle” here at Pencil Revolution in the way we write, and I personally take that as a high compliment. Pencils are somewhat gentle. That’s part of what we love about them.

But sometimes it’s good to be a little…rough, too.

With that in mind, here is a link Shaun sends us from Boing Boing:

“Funfurde sez, ‘Pencils are boring [sic!]. Putting pencils into the Sebastiano pencil holder, however, is the height of entertainment. At least, it’s as entertaining as putting pencils into a holder can be. Unless you don’t like stabbing them into the belly a tubby plastic guy lying spread eagled on your desk, in which case this item is not for you.’”

Read the rest here.

Thanks, Shaun!

[Image, Boing Boing.]

In the days where standardized tests and driver’s license exams are given on computers, it would not seem that pencils would come up in rules or regulations. But our friend Alcarwen writes about an instance in a university where one professor is no fan of graphite:

“Yesterday, during an exam, I was tempted to take it in pencil; maybe it would help the ideas flow better or something. I had some vague idea that perhaps our Prof would disapprove, so I opted for Gel Ink instead. Two classmates went the pencil route.

At the end of the exam, our Prof heartily expressed her disapproval of the pencil route. She told us that someone might erase the answers.

Erase the answers?

Has academic dishonesty gotten that bad? That someone might sneak into an office and erase someone else’s exam? Or a prof could change a student’s answer in order to fail them? Yikes!”

Read the rest of this great post here.

[Text and image, Alcarwen. Used with permission.]

Our friend Woodchuck writes about wonderful things in store for us in 2006:

“On the underground communications front I have just published today my new Pencil World Squidoo lens. This new site highlights some of my more industry focused Timberlines posts along with some key reviews and posts I like best from Pencil Revolution. Also the lens features additional resources on using pencils creatively in a bit different way than simple links from Timbelines blog. So in effect it’s a good place for a quick and easier look at a lot of key Revolutionary activities and resources and can serve as a companion site to the Pencil World Creativity Store.

Finally and most importantly for you Palomino riders I will very soon be adding the option to pick and choose the graphite grades, colors and aquarelle color pencils you want most in your own configurable packs on Pencil World. Some courageous comrades even received a sample pack as part of a Christmas thank you mailer. Rumor has it that KUM pencil sharpeners may be part of some upcoming promotions and a special new alliance is in the works to expand new points of distribution for various parts of the California Republic line to supplement what’s available through the Pencil World store.”

Check out the rest of the post here.

[Text, Timberlines. Image, J.G.]

Our Comrade Loudstyle writes about his new-found love for pencils:

“I have always used pencils (who hasn’t?) but the reviews on Pencil Revolution alerted me to their finer details. I realized I had a couple decent pencils around the house and I tried out some others to see what all the fuss was about. I soon became pretty well addicted…

….Keith Haring Doubles from Acme Writing Tools. I received a nice metal tin containing a dozen of these fine pencils for Christmas several years ago. They feature the colorful and energetic artwork of Keith Haring. For the longest time I shied away from using them often because they looked too nice to sharpen away. I finally got over that silliness and now use them regularly.”

Read about the rest of some favorite pencils at Loudstyle.

[Image and text, Loudstyle. Used with kind permission.]

From the Revecess Blog (via Boing Boing):

“One of the great things about being a sort of vigilante teacher (I go where I’m needed) in Japan is that the kids will show me things that they wouldn’t show their other teachers. Today, they showed me Batoen.

Much like Pokemon is short for Pocket Mosters, Batoen is short for Battle Pencils… just the word for pencil in Japanese is enpitsu. It’s a simple idea. Take pencils, write stuff on each of the sides, so that the pencil becomes a sort of six-sided die. You roll the pencil and the pencil, which represents a monster from Dragon Quest, does something, like damage or healing of hp, or other interesting effects (One kid had some hot chick monster, it’s effect was, ‘Monster kisses everyone, they are made happy’, more detailed rules after the cut).

The kicker is that you are playing with pencils. Japanese schools are pretty strict when it comes to games. No cards(except for school sanctioned ‘Japanese cultural cards’ like karuta or hyakunin …), so poker and Magic/Pokemon are out. But the fact that this uses pencils means that it flies under the radar most the time. And even if the teachers did know about it, what are they gonna do, take the kids pencils away?”

And you can get them shipped to the US, too!

(Thanks to Dow, Mike, Shaun and everyone who sent this in for the links!)

And special thanks to my brother for holding down the fort while I was enroute on the railroad late last week. Don’t worry — I brought him some pencils.

[Images, Revecess Blog.]

Jacob of Untitled 13 is kind enough to let us post one of his recent pencil drawings:

PR: ” I have to ask: what kind of pencil is that? Prismacolor Verithin?”

U13: ” It’s a Staedtler non-repro blue pencil, which is probably pretty similar to a Verithin in softness and color…Been trying to use pencil more and more as it allows for much greater gradient control than pen stippling.”

[Image, Untitled 13. Used with very kind permission.]