Brushpen Migration....

Yes, I've migrated to Tumblr. Ah, the march of technology! Come follow the Brushpen as it continues the journey on the latest(ish) free web platform.

As a parting gift, I will be posting the full Chubby Cheekers chapter from the upcoming "FUME" comic book. In the meantime, here's a brush-up from last weekend's Rose City Comic Con in Portland, Oregon.

Chubby: on set, off camera. Smoke break (it was the 60's...).

From a current work-in-progress. Ladies and gentlemen, I present Mr. and Mrs. Chubby Cheekers.

You see, it's Chubby's birthday....

An unused sketch from my San Diego Opera excursion. Bought some new Tombo felt-tip brushpens just special for this trip--I had high hopes for these, forgetting that I'd used 'em before years ago and not got on with 'em. But I'd forgotten that, and in prep for this opera gig I'd dug up my old pens and did a few sketches--and I loved them! Real frothy with this ability to build up a line thru tone that is quite unique in my experience. They were old, (maybe 10 or even 20 years old??), basically unused all that time...so old that they were only good for a drawing or two before completely dying.

Here's an example of the OLD ones:

You can see the difference. Excited by this look, I bought six new pens...tried 'em out, but they didn't work at all. The new ones are way too wet, without any character to the line, and zero ability to generate tone.

So, a big dud.

Maybe I'll try and dry the new ones out by leaving the caps off for a while....

From drawing at the Opera Wednesday night. Check out the full story at the San Diego Opera Blog.

An off-the-cuff Kirby tribute that got out of hand....

Had a lunch-time sketch session today with the famous Joe Sanabria!

That's right...I'm just gonna post this as if I've been servicing this blog all along....

Halloween is in the air. A grotesquerie from today's waiting room wait.

Beth bought a Brushpen Breakfast Sketchbook and asked to be drawn as an alien...I went Mamie Van Doren style. When I put her in the warhead brazier, she cackled with delight.

Phew. You never know how that's gonna go over.

OK, so I'm trying to follow the lead of those more tech-savvy than me and post these on the vaunted tumblr.

CLICK HERE FOR BRUSHPEN TUMBLR

And Ranjo has been inveighing me to get on Instagram.

But these new image outlets leaves me feeling nostalgic about my Blogger platform. So I want to keep this one going. This format better lends itself to a "curated" scroll, I think. With that in mind, I think I will back fill a few days to show what I did over the weekend at the 2nd Annual San Diego Comic Fest.

So sue me!

Here's Scott Benefiel's copy of the Brushpen Breakfast Book. An Ellis pop-up book "surprize."

There's only ONE copy left of the initial print run--so order yours today!

 Had a great time drawing this for Tyler. Had no idea who Adam Strange was, but he filled me in. Tyler's homemade costume was great--and he got a real kick out of the drawing. Thanks, dude!

Drew this with a bright pink Pentel brushpen. Put it in Pho-Sho and hit "AUTO TONE" and it came out like this. Looks like I did a blue-line underdrawing (I di'n't!).

Inktober ink of the Gorgon "painting." Using an old Pentel brushpen.

 Sadly, I think there's more life and action in this little ink than the whole elaborate Gorgon final!

For Brenno, a pair of posts on materials and technique.

The pen I use 90% of the time is from a Japanese company called Muji. I found the pens in France, and now I order them through the mail from England because I can't read their French website. Here's the Muji site. Their wonderful brush pens are HERE. Just £ 2.50 per pen from the U.K. But made in Japan.

Here's the pen (on the bottom) compared to a typical felt-tip brush pen, in this case, the Faber-Castell PITT.

(I've wrote "5/08" on my Muji to know when I bought it. It helps me keep track not only of age, but use--the date gets worn off with use, so you can tell this one is almost virginal.)

Here's a tip comparison. You'll see right away why the Muji allows such thin lines.

You can see how thin the Muji tip is. I've made some (shaky) lines to show range. The PITT is much closer to a regular felt-tip pen. The Muji is a true brush pen. There are some excellent brush pens available here in the U.S.of A., usually reusable (which is nice!), but they have two drawbacks: they're pricey [$18 or so for the Pentel (not reusable? I forget) to the Kaimei ($80 or so)], and once their tip goes, they are (pretty much) useless.

The Muji is cheap (about $4.00 U.S., plus shipping from the U.K.), and even when the tip goes, you can use those brushes for dry-brush and halftone work. And although they are not reusable (no refillable/replaceable ink cartridge), the ink lasts a while--much longer than the tip!

Here's that new Muji compared to one whose tip has been frizzed by inexpert use (read--me drawing with it):

Here's the new brush showing us the lifestyle choices that will lead to it losing its tip--a.k.a., getting "frizzed." Pressure on the pen results in the bristles "splitting," yielding an interesting (if unpredictable) mark:

You can see even tho' the frizzed pen can no longer make a fine line, it does still have plenty of ink, and can still lay down a nice block of tone.

Brenno wanted to know about specific marks I'd made in the past. I'm so flattered I will make one more post to address this question--specifically.