Leigh Reyes. My Life As a Verb.

One day I woke up and had a Koh-i-noor leadholder family. From top to bottom: tiny Koh-i-noor 2mm for planner fiends; 3.8 mm with curvaceous clip for those who find 5, 5.5 and 5.6 mm way too much; green 5.6 mm; green 2mm with knurled grip.

The Lamy Scribble in stealth black is great for what it’s named after. 3.15 mm lead, sharpener bought separately but had to be bought because it was red.

Usually, leadholders come with built-in sharpeners. I couldn’t resist picking these up anyway. The big one is for 5.5/5.6 mm lead; the Faber-Castell takes 2 and 3mm.

The most unusual leadholder in my collection is the Cleo Skribent Der Gessner. Dave’s Mechanical Pencils blog has a comprehensive review. My version is the cheaper one, with a rustic hessian pouch instead of leather.

Holding the lead in place is a tapered inner sleeve.

It slides down the hollow barrel until it reaches the wide part of the sleeve. A little push and twist, and it’s secure.

Today, history’s first modern pencil (designed by Conrad Gessner in the 16th century) seems quaint, a toy for the nostalgic. The practical-minded will certainly prefer the regular wood-encased pencil. Still, I’m happy to live in a time when pens can write upside down in space and companies recreate 16th century pencil technology. Efficiency makes life easy, but it is poor food for the spirit.

Whoever thought of this at Pilot deserves both a big hug and a tiny kick.

There are other versions of this set, and Alberto Lung of robotninjamonsters reviews one in his Kid Sketching blog. It seems that Pilot has addressed customer feedback regarding portability, and now the set comes with a cloth carry case.

I have a Pilot Croquis leadholder, and 6B leads for it. This was the first time I saw the watercolor leads, so of course I had to bring them home. I wasn’t expecting much by way of pigment intensity, but the packaging added much to the set’s appeal. When opened, the cloth case has a pocket for the plastic palette on the left, and individual pockets for the Croquis pencils on the right.

I don’t know if there’s such a thing as being too organized when it comes to watercolor sets. So many compartments for such a flimsy plastic palette! The waterbrush is of good quality. For some reason I was expecting a blue sponge, then remembered that the Pentel Aquash watercrayon set is the one that has it.

I took the pencils out for a spin. My usual technique is coloring then wetting, although with these pencils one can also shave the lead into one of the palette wells and dissolve with water.

I used a lightweight sketch paper for these samples, hence the buckling. The texture is soft and crumbly.

It dissolves easily, which is a plus.

Let’s pretend this is a flower. I deliberately held back on dissolving all the color because I like leaving some clue as to the material origin of my doodles.

My camera was having a bad day, and so was my color correction. Don’t mind the pinkness of the paper – the droopy flower is very close to its real-life color.

Pilot gets big hugs for the cuteness, portability, and real-life usefulness of this set. The tiny kick is for the cheap plastic palette, which I fear will crease badly and tear within a few days of use, it’s that flimsy. Can anyone suggest a replacement (or an easy instructable)?

Presenting the ultimate non-disposable writing instrument: the beta pen. With a tip made from a special alloy (that includes lead), it makes marks on paper with metal, the way people used to before graphite and pencils. In the past, artists used wire clamped in a stylus or even bare. You can try that technique today – I know I will, when I find the time.

The beta pen looks like a fancy pencil. It’s heavy. I chose the black finish. @dowdyism featured the pocket version on his blog and on Flickr.

It comes with an explanatory leaflet. I share it with you because I am lazy and do not wish to paraphrase.

It’s not just a novelty item to whip out at dull meetings.

Writing with metal isn’t like writing with graphite. What it feels like is dry-writing with an extra-fine nib. It’s toothy but not irritatingly so. The strokes don’t get too dark, even when layered. When I was taking a shot of my first experiment with the beta pen and watercolor, I noticed that the metal marks caught the light and almost seemed to sparkle.

So I decided to take a shot of metalpoint side-by-side with graphite. Held away from the light, the two are difficult to tell apart.

I see the sparkles when I hold the paper at another angle.

On a yellow Post-It the sheen was even more obvious.

I don’t think it will replace a regular pencil (for one, it’s not erasable). There are also those who prefer darker marks, like the ones made by 2B lead, and this is closer to an HB or even an H. I like the weight of history the beta pen carries, for all its modern styling. I’ll keep it.

Raymay is a line of school products from Japan. Amongst wonders such as triple-pencil caps and what Google tells me is a “free babysitting service” but which seems more like a laser-etched nameplate, there is the Raymay Studymate. This is a plastic pencil extender with a built-in sharpener.

Instructions on the back make it very clear how to use the Studymate even if you can’t read Japanese.

The portion that threads onto the barrel secures the pencil so it doesn’t slip out during use. I tried it with a pathetic excuse for a pencil scrap.

It held!

Then I tried to sharpen the pencil and it crumbled. So on to the next victim.

The built-in sharpener makes an effective – though unexpected – counterweight.

The ribbed portion of the extender also felt good in the hand. I find myself reaching for the Studymate now when I need a pencil. I’m sure the Kuru Toga and the Lamy Scribble are pouting in their case.

I found the Raymay Studymate in the stationery section of Kinokuniya. For an impulse buy, it’s earned its keep.

Yes, a pencil extender. This one is made from a warm green mottled celluloid, with a gold-plated clip and cap trim ring. It came from Japan. (But if I choose to believe the brand name, it came from outer space.)

The “barrel” is actually the part that holds the pencil. It narrows in diameter near the threads to make a snug fit for most pencils. The pencil here is a Cretacolor Monolith 9B. The Monolith line is woodless – the entire pencil is graphite, with a thin layer of lacquer. The softer grades break easily. This one has been rescued from uselessness. (Or so I’d like to think.)

This pencil extender was designed to be posted. So post I do.

The celluloid is striking. I wouldn’t mind a Platinum 3776 in this material.

I couldn’t resist showing it beside other pencil extenders. Rightmost is a standard extender from Cretacolor. In the middle, the Midori Brass Pencil – isn’t it so beautiful? I’d break pencils just to be able to use these more often.

Pencils.jp is the motherlode of pencil extenders. Not to mention other drool-worthy items. Go on, take a look. Let me know if you get anything.