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  Pencils! Platinum Pro-Use II, Pentel PD345May 21, 2013 11:22 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Like the good ship Aurelia (shouldn't be too hard to figure out where that name came from :), I'm behind schedule too, so just the one page today. Part of the reason I got behind was because I spent some time criss-crossing town the past few days to manage a sale of a couple pieces of the A* original art in my current art show in town (at Spin's Barbershop in Wallingford, through June :). Exciting! The other part was getting a filling at the dentist's yesterday, which was eh exciting in a different way, I guess (always fun when they tell you it's such a small one, they won't need to numb you up--don't worry, it'll be painless! :o And then he keeps going back in with the drilllllllll).
 
Since I lead such an exciting life, I think I'm going to be sharing some of it with you over the next few days--that's right, it's more posts about pencils! Yes, hold onto your shorts, we're talkin' graphite! :ooo
 
I know I've excited you before by telling you that I'm doing the pencil work in A* with a Platinum Pro-Use II 05 drafting pencil, a fine machined aluminum Japanese drawing instrument I got over here, but I never thrilled you with a picture of it, so
 
Image
 
The long metal pipe for the drawing lead in front is the main way to tell the difference between a drafting pencil like the Pro-Use II--it's so you can draw along rulers better and stuff I guess--and a regular everyday mechanical pencil like that blue beauty in front there, my trusty Pentel PD345. Both use 0.5 mm leads, although there are models in other lead sizes. Wikipedia says the PD345 has been around since the 80's, and...that is probably about how long I've had that one. :) Still going strong! At some point Pentel came out with a new model that has a sorta bigger lead-advance button and other garishness, but fortunately they also still make and sell the original model, although I guess not in this nice blue color, which is too bad. That's the pencil I was doing the layouts with when I first started doing A* traditionally.
 
The Pro-Use II is definitely nicer to draw with, though--far better balance and weighting, finer tip, beefier feed mechanism, and MAN I swear it must have the best grip in the pencil world, just look at those lovely wavey curves; they snuggle right up against your fingertips for a wonderfully solid grip, without grating or slipping like the spikey grid grips on just about every other drafting pencil. Nice and thick, too! The Pro-Use II is awesome.
 
And I'm going to be moving to something else. Or trying to. :P Gasp! The carbon-tipped saga continues tomorrow, probably.
 
 
 
 
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