What’s your favourite sketching tool and why?

I haven’t got one now. However a few years ago my Gramps gave me a pencil and sketchbook.

It was a long pencil, a normal pencil, soft but not too soft.

I used it for EVERYTHING, all my work almost every day. When I finally got down to the nub after sharpening it for the last time I actually cried. I really miss that pencil…

OK! How weird am I??!

I really don’t have a favorite sketching tool, I use whatever is available at the moment. I might be in a board meeting, where the speaker suddenly sounds like the teacher on Charlie Brown, I will then use my pen to sketch something and will most likely end up being an art project.
I use to sketch as I ride the bus, I like the “movement challenge”, just holding the pencil steady whenever the bus hits a bump, great exercise.
At times I go by a river with my sketch pad or that “wake up at 3am sketching moment” like a writer, in order not to forget.

Yes I always used to love sketching with a pen in class, to pass the time.
My history teacher used to make me nod off, had to do something to stay awake.
Captain Doodle!

I don’t sketch much now as all the work I do is digital. I have plans to purchase a Tablet/slate pc and will use that when I get it.

Yes I would love a Tablet pretty impressive devices, would need to save up for a while to get a good size one with all the extras.
If there are any millionaires out there who would like to buy me and Buddha a tablet, please don’t hesitate. Remember to give is divine.

Funny, I was looking at tablets only yesterday and thinking…’Mmmm, maybe …one day…”
But I would NEVER give up my dog-eared old moleskin pad and fine point ink pen that go EVERYWHERE with me. It’s crammed full of:
Reference sketches (of people, places, objects, architectural and botanical details etc – you name it),
Contact addresses & telephone no’s (mostly builders and tradesmen – dunno why!), Impromptu poems (both witty one-liners that get jotted down before they’re forgotten and lengthy prose; mostly emotional out-pourings….),
Patterns and designs noted on everything from tablecloths and curtains to cobblestones,
Doodles,(a psychologists dream no doubt!)
Symbols (that must have meant something at the time but blow me if I can ever remember what!)
To-do lists (PLENTY of those!) wish lists, shopping lists,
Measurements. No, not mine!(although I do carry family shoe, shirt and dress sizes around) they’re mostly of odd spaces in the house, in case I happen upon a perfect piece of furniture or object to fill them with…
Fabric samples – stapled in
Business cards – ditto
Dried flowers, pressed in the cracks
etc…etc…etc
In other words, my life!I’d be totally lost without it
I’ve had it for years and can’t really understand why there’s still always a corner clear somewhere, for me to add still more….but inevitably there always is!

In my former career (which has ended abruptly very recently)I designed plush animal characters mostly, bears, dogs, bunnies, penguins and cats and more, all with a real cheap mechanical pencil HB 5mm lead, and a pad for markers. That paper is so great, almost like tracing paper so I could redraw a very wobbly sketch to be more presentable for reviews, but didn’t smudge like tracing paper.
I even did my 3 view technical drawings with these same tools, and used a very cool scanning trick to achieve black pencil drawings on their own layer with no halo or fuzz, then color beneath the linework in Photoshop with soft brushes, simulating a soft fabric. I miss the character designing, even though any idea that made it past the art director got thoroughly crushed, watered down, mooshed into a standard that I was usually ashamed of. But I have a whole portfolio of the best of the originals, the good stuff, heh heh, before they were art directed into pablum.

Isn’t amazing, how those little Sketch pads say so much about us. You were right there yvonne our doodles do tell. And also the way we lay out our pad is maybe a mirror into our lives, crumbs getting all psychoanalytical. No I did not spell it with out checking first.

I’ve tried a few sketching tools, Charcoal hard and soft conti, soft moves over the surface really smoothly good smudging, hard is great for thick dark lines. But I must admit a pencil and paper usually a 2B grade does the trick for me, time to doodle. A pen for caricature lovely lines.
But a pad and a drawing implement has always kept me happy thoughout my life, it really is amazing what these basic tools have done for the human race. From Cavemen to present day Banksy we love to leave our mark.