I’m a huge advocate for working with cheaper drawing materials. It’s my ardent belief that even the basest tools can yield a work of beauty in the right hands. Some time ago, I got my hands on a couple of EcoQua dot grid notebooks. The store I work at said to trash them because they were defective. To be exact the covers on every book in this particular batch were just falling off. I took it upon myself to rescue a few and fix them up good as new with a little hot glue. The pages in these books are fairly delicate and smooth. The dot grid is nice for measuring out space in more freehanded work like the doodles below.
The second of these cheaper drawing materials is the Pilot Precise V5 pen. One of my favorite among cheap pens. This is the first ink pen I ever used when I first started getting into doing pen and ink work. It has a fine needle tip which lives up to its name as a precise pen. The ink in this pen is okay. It’s a decent shade of black and it doesn’t bleed much on the right paper. In fact, on the EcoQua’s smooth sheets, these lines came out surprisingly crisp, in my opinion.
Cheaper drawing materials could really save you in a pinch
For these little sketches, my main focus was on making the most out of the materials themselves. I went with a flow of consciousness of sorts for the art itself. With a vague idea of what to draw, I hatched away at these pages. The writing is random tidbits from some Mage Punk Archives stories I have in mind. I wanted to get a feel for lettering on the dot grid.
As a semi-traditional artist, I enjoy any opportunity to make use of new materials. . I feel like too many artists put too much stock in the “quality” of their materials. In my mind, it’s important to keep an open mind as an artist. The finest tools can’t make up for mediocrity. Besides, you never know when you might have to make do with what you have available to you.
Thanks for reading!
