I think that ballpoint pen is fast becoming my favorite drawing tool.
Unlike a micron pen, you can get a black (or a blue, or a green, or a red) line and a variety of grey lines of varying widths.
Unlike a quill pen you don’t have to carry around a bottle of indian ink, which leaks all over your other drawing tools if you don’t screw the top on tight enough, and if you screw the top on tight enough, you then need a wrench to get it off again the next day when the ink dries in the thread of the top.
Unlike a pencil, you don’t need to carry either a sharpener, which doesn’t sharpen, or an exacto knife, which is confiscated when you board a plane (I also know someone who harpooned his best friend when he gave her a hug and had an exacto knife in his jacket pocket.
The craziest thing of all is that you can pick them up anywhere: in hotel rooms, workshops, stores, and so forth.
So here’s to ballpoint pen, probably the most under-rated and under-used drawing tool of all.
Personally I think we should follow the Brits and Australians and start referring to them as “Biros” after their inventor Laszlo Biro.
In Honor of Laszlo Biro.
Advertisement
