HOW DOES IT FEEL?

I mentioned a couple of pages ago that I like the Staedtler Mars 4B pencils, which I use to draw in my Moleskine Watercolor sketchbooks.  Of course there are thousands of pencil and paper combinations, any of which are just as valid.

What I want to emphasize, though, is the feeling of using this pencil on this paper.  Every morning when I draw, I start with a blank sketchbook page, and after musing awhile on what I want to draw, I put down that first line with my pencil.

I have found a pencil and paper combination that gives me great pleasure.  There is an interaction between the lead and the texture of the paper that feels just great.  It is in the way that the lead moves over the paper, and the way that the lead engages with the texture of the paper.  It is as if after I draw that first line, I feel myself relax.  Which makes drawing the next lines so much more enjoyable.

I have come to realize that this feeling has become valuable to me.  When you like the feeling of using a tool, you will want to continue to use it.  When you like the sound that comes out of your piano, you will continue to play it.  Or when you simply like the sound of the music that comes out of your stereo, you will get greater pleasure from the music.  Think of your car.  Your dish sponge.  Etc.

After you draw your first line on the paper, stop right there.  How did that feel?  You might then grab any paper that is handy and then draw a few lines, concentrating solely on how that feels to you.  Did it feel different?  One you start to get tuned into this feeling, it is amazing how much difference there really is.  Some feel ordinary.  Some are symbiotic.

But I’ve never heard any of the books that we have referenced in these pages,  Ching, Lauseau, Jenkens, et al, once mention the feeling of a pencil and paper combination.  They all talk about different lead hardness.  Then they talk about starting and ending a line with a dot.  They talk about how straight the freehand line should be.  All of which are important.

But nobody talks about this hugely subjective and important phenomenon;  how does it feel?  Is this giving me pleasure?  Nobody talks about what this pleasure is supposed to feel like.  We don’t even have a commonly accepted set of variables with which to have an objective discussion and evaluation.

Yet you think we would.  Just as the eskimos have all sorts of words for the most important aspect of their lives, snow, you would think that we would have words to describe the most important aspect of our design lives, pencil / paper combinations.

So here is another spin off idea if anybody is looking for something to do.  Start to codify and establish this paper and pencil dynamic.  The mere act of this codification would raise the consciousness of the design world.  Folks might then argue passionately about which of these feelings are important.  They might really start to believe deep down in a pencil.

And if they did that, it would be a very good thing.