summer project: episode 4 – PENCILS.

An unassuming white sheet of A4 instructed me to make work with, or about, 5 pencils. Of course, I obeyed.

After procrastinating in a truly adult fashion, by watching criminal amounts of Jersey Shore (don’t judge), I resolved to give myself a single day to complete this particular project (needless to say it was a dull, drizzly afternoon, with no Jersey Shore available to quench my refined televisual tastes). Immediately, my enthusiastic mood was thwarted upon the realisation that I didn’t own any PROPER pencils. By PROPER pencils, it should be noted that I’m referring to the standard yellow and black striped pencils which are an integral chunk of my memory as a primary school pupil.

As young reckless infants, we are encouraged to love and treasure them, treat them with respect and care until.... Suddenly our handwriting is suitably joined up, with the right angle of pretentious slant and we are awarded an ink pen as a trophy for our compliance to the handwriting police.

Anyway! A decision to paint my inferior pencils to look like my beloved childhood pencils set the wheel in motion. I wrote a guide on what I thought was required to become a successful illustrator and subsequently allocated each individually painted pencil an essential role as a functioning instrument in an illustrator’s tool kit.

N.B. I don’t recommend, however successful you are as an illustrator, that you extract tea bags from your brews with a moderately sharp pencil; it may result in lots of floaty tea-leaf-y bits escaping into your brew. Catastrophe!