Intro
As a kid, I was fascinated by art and absolutely captivated by animated movies and 3D animation. I also have a deep love for technical drawings and drafting. One of the first subjects I passed at university was Descriptive Geometry, and I loved every moment of it. My daily companion was a Rotring Variant .3 pencil. Professors would often remind me that the Rotring Variant was meant for technical drawing, not for taking lecture notes — as if I didn’t already know! But I didn’t care. That pencil was precise, controllable, had perfect wetness, and was smooth enough for any surface.
Inspiration
After finishing Descriptive Geometry, I no longer had a reason to clean or refill my technical pens, so they gathered dust for years. Yet I missed them, dearly. Eventually, I decided to pick them up again and do some drawings.
At first, I considered creating blueprints of a machine, but there wasn’t any machine I loved enough to commit to — except perhaps a steam locomotive, which was far too complex. Instead, I went back to my childhood memories of wartime, when I discovered the joy of reading comics.
Idea
I gathered my pencils, though I couldn’t find all of them. Those I did find were dry, and I had no ink left. So I went on a little shopping spree, but finding technical pen ink proved difficult — it seems no one needs technical pens anymore. Flea market prices for a set of 10 were often lower than for a single pen.
Fortunately, I found a store that had some ink. They had only one bottle of black and several of red, but that was enough to get started.
Technique
Drawing with technical pencils isn’t fundamentally different from other media — except that there are no traditional corrections, and you need the right paper. I recommend at least 150gsm, acid-free paper.
Ink is water-based, so it needs time to dry; thin paper will warp and stretch. To preserve details and maintain stability, I chose Clairefontaine Paint ON, 250gsm - A4, paired with my trusty Rotring Variant. It was the perfect combination.
Personal Stance
I haven’t done many comic-style artworks in my life, but this one was an absolute joy. It was a fun way to revive memories of my technical pencils and remember all the fuss everyone used to make over them.