Art

[Crystal dragon]

So many to choose :p

[daveb]

No gouache?

 

As for pens, I like Micron pens. They come in various colors and line weights. And good archival inks. But any good technical pens or drawing pens are good.

[Crystal dragon]

Ooh, yeah, the pilot pen one I put is like that but with a metal nib, 

I dont know the general term for those kinds of pens :’)

I forgot about gauche tbh

[Jelle]

15 minutes ago, Crystal dragon said:

I forgot about gauche tbh

You can still edit the poll I think

 

As for me, watercolor is the prettiest. And don't even ask me about pens because I love them all ❤️

[Eroell]

I've drawn since I can remember and I've tried many different art mediums.

• Paint: I like painting both with acrylics and watercolours but I chose the former because there are so many different ways of using them (both as thick and as very diluted paint). I hate oil paints because they dry at least 2 weeks, can't be used on paper and can't be diluted in water.
• Pastel: I suppose that by 'chalk' you mean soft pastels. I prefer them to oil pastels because they give much more possibilities (let's just ignore the fact that I have to spray my drawings with the hair lacquer to preserve them)
• Pencil: Coloured pencils because I've always liked colouring my drawings and I'm not fond of black and white ones.
• Pen: Fountain pen because it can be used for very long time, refills are very cheap and I like using ink erasers (it seems to be a cheaper alternative to erasable ball pens)

[silent__]

I can't answer, not enough pen options lol

 

(felt tip!)

[Blue eyes white dragon]

I am a painter and I love oil painy and oil pastels. I also prefer gel pens and color pencils for other stuff

[KatDeLacey]

I love that ballpoint is winning (even though I voted for Pilot precise because mmm super thin lines)

Unipin fineliners are great although the tips could be more durable. I also adore my Posca paint markers.

[PaleMoth]

I'm an ink lover. My favourite to draw with are dip pens with ink because of the fluidity and presion. I use acrylic ink which I also paint with. I use fineliners a lot to draw with. My favourite are Microns and Copics

 

I like oil paints but they are so sticky. I hear they've developed water mixable oils which sound interesting. 

 

With pencils i like both mechanical and good old graphite especially water soluble. I like charcoal too. 

[Milque Toast]

I'm personally a big fan of coloured pencils, especially nice ones, as well as water colour paints!

I like mixing up my mediums a lot, and one of my most ambitious projects was an outline done in ink, colouring in water colour, and shading/tints in pencil.

I'm also a big fan of gouache! It's kinda like watercolour, but still super vibrant. I have a little collection of pokemon drawings I did with those

[sirenian]

extra fine felt tip pen.  No metal at the tip of my pens, thank you.

[verily-forsooth-egads]

Never catch me using a ballpoint pen willingly, especially for art. They will NEVER give you a solid line. Felt tip please.

I like oil pastels, can't stand the texture of chalk on paper.

For almost any purpose, give me a mechanical pencil any day of the week.

[daveb]

I have occasionally used ballpoint pens for sketching. Looking for cheap materials, I used cheapo pens and brown paper from a grocery bag. For me it helped avoid the feeling of wasting something "precious" I can often get with some art supplies. And using the pen meant I was also freed from temptation to erase. Of course, they weren't meant to be finished art by any means.

[Boondocks Paradox]

Awww I miss my art school days! I haven't done any traditional art for years now; guess photography stuck to me more than I thought.

 

My favorite medium is watercolor for I find it soothing and time passes by without me noticing when I do a watercolor project. Next are colored pencils and oil pastels; I tend to do realistic renders and both do the job the best for me (I abuse the white colored pencil and oil pastel for blending).

 

My favorite pen technique is stippling. Same reason probably as watercolor; I love to take time to finish an artwork. 😄

 

 

[ElloryJaye]

Haven't done much art in a while, but I used to have a considerable fondness for charcoal pencils when working in black and white.

[everywhere and nowhere]

Lacking manual skills and visual imagination, I'm not so good about painting and drawing. But as for writing, I have a very specific favourite pen. This aspect, too, is a little hindered by my lack of manual skills - my handwriting is absolutely horrible, my rough copies are even hard to read even for myself and even my best possible handwriting is only readable for myself. In school time, several times I had to read my essays to the teacher during the pause, because she was unable to read it.

It at least has one good result: I throw my rough copy notebooks into the recycling without any fear that someone could read it - I feel positive that even if anyone finds it and has interest in it, they will be unable to read it anyway...

But I nevertheless hand-write my diary and refuse to switch to anything else. So I need ways to mitigate the effects of my horrible handwriting, several ways of making the end result more readable:

• Even though they are more rare (especially when it comes to larger notebooks, and since 1995 all of my diaries are written in hardcover A4 notebooks), since 2012 I use lined, not checkered notebooks, because they force me to write with slightly larger letters.
• Black, not blue pen - just to make it more visible.
• And a specific pen model, to further make the line as visible as possible. Which lead me to Pilot BPS-GP XB, which has the thickest line among all ballpoint pens (ball diameter is a whooping 1,6 mm, the line is actually a little narrower). There are other kinds of pens with a line yet more visible, but they also have a serious downside: they are most of the kind of thin felt-tip pens and their ink pierces to the other side of the paper. No way, I have tried them and they are not suitable for writing on ordinary paper.

This how this favourite pen looks like (unfortunately a large part of the photo is blank):

I just buy refills for it, although recently I had to buy a whole new pen after having used the old one for about ten years - a rubber piece which protected the tip fell out of the ferrule, or how is it called, and I couldn't put it back, it kept falling out. As a result, at least at first, when there was still much ink inside (and I always keep my pen with the tip facing down, because then it writes much better*), the tip was usually almost oozing with ink after removing the ferrule, and I had to carefully wipe it with a tissue before I could start writing...

 

*Believe it or not, but this also has something to do with paint. I wanted to buy something to store my pen vertically, but I wasn't too happy with everything I could find and decided to make a pen stand for myself. I bought some mineral clay instead (in fact, I got this idea from watching dioramists on YouTube ). I used a tube of effervescent calcium tablets wrapped in aluminum foil to give it a correct shape (later I removed the tube, the foil just remained inside), made a slightly wider bottom to make it stand more securely... Later I also used most of the remaining clay to make two more objects: coasters for candlesticks, to keep the wax from dripping on the table: I flattened it, cut the right shape with a bowl (protecting it with a layer of wrapping film),  then made an indentation in the shape of the candlestick bottom... Then I painted the coasters - my candlesticks are made of cobalt glass (I absolutely love this colour 🤩), so I bought ultramarine acrylic paint and a tiny jar of blue glitter (in a toy store). And then I decided to paint the pen stand this way too, it looks great now.

[Sally]

I don't care that much about pen types.  I'm a painter and use acrylics because I can barely breathe around oil paints.  You do sacrifice the plasticity, though, that you get with oil paints -- although there are substances that can slow down acrylics from drying so fast, you can't paint something tonight and go back to it tomorrow and move it in a different "direction" -- you have to paint over it.  Acrylics do well when you want to paint sometthing flat, in color blocks.  Otherwise, you have to add emphases very fast, or add them later as separate shapes.  

 

TLDR -- I paint with acrylics.  

[Morays]

For drawing I use a dip pen -- predominantly switching between a spoon nib and a crowquill nib, with a few assorted others as needed -- and Dr. Ph Martin's india ink. I use Staedtler pigment liner pens for lettering and panel borders and such, which I strongly prefer to Microns.

 

I tried both acrylics and oils in a painting class a while back and couldn't really tolerate either. I'm intrigued by gouache and watercolor, but need to really sit down and take the time to teach them to myself; painting's a wholly different skillset from drawing.

 

For figure drawing, I like charcoal pencils. It helps me be looser and less precious about the lines I'm making.

 

For aimlessly doodling or making thumbnails, I like to use extremely shitty ballpoint pens, the kind you get as freebies from hotels and banks. I love the weird gritty texture you get from them, almost pencil-like.

[iff]

@Crystal dragon

 

This poll is being locked and moved to the read only Census archive for it's respective year. As part of ongoing Census organisation, and in an attempt to keep the demographics of the polls current with the active user base at the time, the polls will last for one year from now on. However, members are allowed and even encouraged to restart new polls similar to the archived ones if they like them.

  

iff, Census Forum Moderator