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Pentel – the Best Drawing Tools Ever

Friday, September 24, 2010

It seems that my dream of possessing high quality drawing tools has at last come true. I have received a parcel from Germany containing 3,5 kg (almost 8 pounds) of pens, markers and brushes from Pentel. Having opened the parcel, I was so much in awe that I stood motionless for a while contemplating this marvelous treasure I’ve being coveting for a long time since I first discovered Pentel drawing tools. In fact, Pentel art tools are the best I tried so far.


Pentel brush pens, markers, pastels, gel rollers and other drawing tools

I fell in love with Pentel when I first saw a Pentel pocket brush pen in the Internet. I worked for a web and graphic design company at that time and constantly faced the problem of being unable to easily create a good looking outline for sketches and drawings I made for the company. I used a regular ink pen and had to do a number of strokes to make a pressure sensitive effect for outlines. I thought it would be good to have a kind of a brush with a fine tip allowing me to draw with ink controlling pressure and thus to vary the line thickness as needed to create beautiful looking outlines. I started looking for such drawing tool and this is when I discovered a Pentel pocket brush pen.

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen is a pen with a refillable cartridge containing pigmented ink which feeds a fine brush tip which is the most awesome element of the pen as it allows varying the line thickness in a single stroke. I was very much frustrated to find out that it was almost impossible to buy Pentel products in Ukraine. It seems that Pentel Co. Ltd is not present in the Ukrainian market so far. I was lucky to have a good friend in Berlin, Germany, who was kind enough to purchase and send me my first Pentel brush pen. And I was absolutely amazed at how flexible I became in drawing after I had tried the brush pen. This drawing tool had even exceeded my expectations. All good qualities of the brush pen make it a must have drawing tool for various kinds of drawing “genres” and styles ranging from manga and comics drawing to picturesque landscape paintings.

Using Drawing Tools from Pentel (Video)




The first commercial drawings I created with my new Pentel brush pen were cute panda bears drawn for a teacher from the USA William Cunningham. I made a few videos showing how those drawings had been made and uploaded them on Youtube. This is one of those videos:

Drawing a Giant Panda with a Pentel Brush Pen


Pentel pocket brush pen drawing
This cute panda bear was drawn with a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen


And this is when my drawings were noticed by guys from PentelArts – an online Pentel store in Europe. They really liked how I used the brush pen in the video and suggested sending me some more brush pens (including color ones) to further experiment with them and experience in full how Pentel tools can simplify work of an artist and make his/her artworks look better and more expressive. Since then Pentel brush pens had become my indispensable drawing tools in almost every drawing I create (just watch videos on my Youtube channel to get convinced).

I had not dared to use color brush pens for some time as I had been waiting for a good drawing commission but I got mostly black & white portraits and illustrations orders. And since I was eager to use them I took those color brush pens with me on my vacation at the Sea of Azov to experiment a little with a marine scenery painting. Here are a couple of sketches I had made using color brush pens from Pentel:

Sketches Drawn with Color Brush Pen from Pentel


Pentel color brush pens sketch
A sketch drawn with color Pentel brush pens

sketch (color Pentel brush pens)

Extensive usage of Pentel pocket brush pens and mentioning it in my drawing videos has not left people from PentelArts untouched and I was asked whether I wanted some other drawing supplies from Pentel to experiment with as I used some analogues they had in their product range. And how could I resist such a generous offer if my love for Pentel had begun from the first brush pen? I agreed anticipating my new experience with one of the best drawing tools brand. But what they had sent totally surprised and amazed me! Color and black brush pens, brushes for aquarelle painting, sign pens, outline markers, oil pastels and pastels for drawing on fabric, gel rollers and other drawing tools are now at my disposal. I will definitely try them all and make my best to master drawing with each of these tools. I will make a lot of videos showing performances of pens and brushes from Pentel. And I want to say big THANK YOU to PentelArts for this wonderful gift and for inspiring me to create new artworks fitting the highest quality level of Pentel drawing tools.

Related posts:
The best tool to outline drawings
Panda tattoo
Pentel Pocket Brush Pen drawing videos
Wacom Inkling review

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Drawing a Portrait from an Old Photograph

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Another project commissioned by Andrew Hennigan was a portrait drawn from an old photograph. I was supposed to draw a pen and ink portrait from a small full-length photograph of one of Andrew’s great grandfathers who was born in 1879. The picture itself was taken in about 1900. The man on the photograph was an enthusiastic amateur photographer and I believe that is why this photograph had the best quality among other pictures of Andrew’s great grandfathers. Andrew has a dream of having good portraits of all his great grandparents one day as their vintage photographs are either too small or of bad quality to look good hanging on the wall. I hope that I will be able to help Andrew bring his dream to life when he finds usable photos of his ancestors whose portraits he would like to have. And I appreciate allowing me to show the original photograph, the final portrait and the drawing video in my blog.


Giving a new life to an old photograph


drawing a portrait from an old vintage photograph


Related posts:
Drawing an Ink Portrait from a Picture
Drawing a Family Portrait
Portrait of grandmother with Chevrolet Bel Air

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Drawing an Ink Portrait from a Picture

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Today I would like to tell you about my recent portrait assignment. It was another portrait-from-photo commission. The portrait was created for a Communication Consultant Andrew Hennigan, based in Aix en Provence, France, and Stockholm, Sweden. The man teaches people how to communicate properly and professionally. Not many people know that good communication skills are in fact the core of a success almost in any sphere of today’s life beginning from an individual’s private life to big companies’ popularity and recognition in their market niche. Decent communication skills are far from being something people are born with. Actually, I believe there are more people who constantly face annoying and life-ruining problems while communicating with other people than those who are able to speak clearly, convincingly and eloquently. A lot of people cannot verbalize their thoughts, some have fear of public speaking, and others do not like how their voices sound or they are self-conscious about their appearance. Therefore if you experience these or similar problems and want to overcome those difficulties or you just want improvements in your communication abilities, I believe Andrew Hennigan is the man who can be of assistance, especially after I noticed how good he is in expressing his thoughts in multiple languages.


But let’s get back to the portrait. As usually it was an ink portrait drawn using cross-hatching technique on an A4 paper sheet. You are welcome to watch the video below to see the whole drawing process, although I had to speed up the video in order to upload it on Youtube. Andrew was very kind to allow showing the portrait and his photograph I had used as a reference. And I hope he will love the original I sent him and will find a proper usage of the high resolution digital copy of the portrait. Thanks for hiring me, Andrew!

Pen and Ink Portrait Drawn from a Photograph (pic + video)


pen and ink portrait from picture (portrait from photograph)



Related posts:
Drawing a Family Portrait
The Elf Princess

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Video Report No. 4

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

I released my fourth video report showing some of my artworks created during July and August 2010.




Related posts:
My Video Report No.1
My Video Report No.2
My Video Report No.3

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New American Wildlife Illustrations

Monday, September 6, 2010

After a relatively short period of time since I had made wildlife illustrations for American Wildlife t-shirts by Buffalo and Company (today the company is called Buffalo Jackson Trading Co. ), the guys from Buffalo & Co. got back to me to offer another wildlife illustrations project to expand the series of “Honor Your Wild” t-shirts. I guess the first promotional campaign was a success for Buffalo & Company and people loved their t-shirts for which I had had honor to draw beautiful animals of North America.

This time I was asked to draw male and female turkeys as well as male and female white-tailed deer (aka whitetails). The guys from Buffalo & Company loved my cross-hatching drawing technique, therefore I traditionally used this technique for the new illustrations to match the style which had become a feature of the t-shirts recently released by Buffalo & Company.

I want to show you low resolution copies of wildlife illustrations created for Buffalo and Company as well as videos which I traditionally shoot for those who may be interested in mastering cross-hatching technique or simply like watching an artist drawing.

Turkeys Illustration


male and female turkeys
Male and female turkeys

turkey t-shirt, tshirt with turkeys
Buffalo and Company's turkey t-shirt


White-Tailed Deer Illustrations


male white-tailed deer (aka whitetail buck)
Whitetail buck


female white-tailed deer (whitetail doe)
Whitetail doe



male and female white-tailed deer (whitetails)

I have always been impressed by how many creative ideas the management of Buffalo and Company has and how enthusiastic and energetic their team is. Being their best go to artist (as they call me), I was asked to help in implementing another their original idea of creating a unique series of American wildlife bow ties. For this purpose I was supposed to turn all wildlife illustrations previously created by me for Buffalo and Company into simplified black and white images, a kind of stencil pictures of animals (a bison, an elk, a brss, a trout, mallards, a male turkey and a male whitetail). And I did so, coz I am always happy to assist in my old clients’ projects and to help to bring their ideas to life. And here is what I came up with black and white American wildlife pics.


Stencil Wildlife Illustrations for Bow Ties


American wildlife animals stencil illustrations

Products with my wildlife illustrations are available at Buffalo & Company on-line store.


Related posts:
My other wildlife illustrations for Buffalo and Company
Hunting and fishing drawings
Bison drawing
Lion drawing

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