The Technical Pen
Gary Simmons
Watson Guptill
Nonfiction, Art
*****
Description
Gary Simmons teaches everything you ever wanted to know about the technical pen. Once used by drafters and technical workers, they have been taken over by artists, who prize the consistent line width, durability and versatility of the pens. Materials, techniques and exercises are covered here, with many examples in both color and black-and-white. He also has notes on how the pens work and methods to troubleshoot problems, both in art and with the pen's operation.
Review
Pen and ink is "my" medium. For whatever reason, I tend to use it the most, and get my best results with it. Partly, it's because a pen is self-contained, and thus ideally suited to my less-than-ideal "work" situation (a lap desk, a couch, and a living room.) Of course, it could be because, for years, my main artistic outlet was doodling in the margins of my homework at school, where pens were all I had. Though I tend to use the cheaper (but less permanent) ball-point pens, I do have a set of technical pens which I love to use. This book was, and still is, the most complete and informative tome on the medium I ever located. It even shows how works can be taken beyond the standard black-and-white, both by incorporating other media and by using liquid acrylic pigments directly in the ink reservoirs of the pens themselves. Perhaps one of the most interesting and helpful demonstrations (to me, anyway) is a section where he takes the same basic image and renders it in twenty-two different ways, noting what works and what doesn't. Anyone who thinks this would be dull doesn't realize the versatility of the medium, the many textures they can render. Most of the techniques and exercises apply to any pen-and-ink art, but it also explains what makes the technical pens more than glorified ball-points. Anybody who wants to use these pens must have a copy of this book.