what does your local architecture student carry: too much.
Okay, I made a mistake. I got too into writing this, and now it’s over 2300 words. No little snippet to start with. I hope you have a nice warm drink in your hand and a blanket to enjoy reading on this cold winter morning.
There’s this notion that architects are picky with their pens. They like their fine liners and they like their markers. I think a part of that is true in the sense that I’ve seen so many students showing each other their shiny new markers, all using something that you can’t really just buy at the grocery store. Studying architecture makes you pay attention to things that others see as everyday, and that can make you quite picky. There’s a general love of stationery among most, and we are actively encouraged to think on paper and always have something to draw with. Although iPad people exist, and they have such cool sketches, I’ve also seen my fair share of fountain pens. Compare that to the mechanical engineering faculty, where my friends say that almost nobody even carries a pen. Just a laptop.
I thought this can also be a little gift guide because almost all of these things are easily found in your local art supply store, which makes for a good gift for those in your life that enjoy nice pens but aren’t fountain pen people (yet). I know that before I got into fountain pens art stores were my kryptonite and would regularly go to buy pens and pencils. So, let us get started!
My pen case is heavy and is dubbed “the brick.” It’s also the only thing you might not find in a regular art supply store, as I ordered it from penstore.nl. Jetpens also have it I believe. It’s Lithlab’s Hinemo stand-up pen case. Usually it’s a slim pen case with a reversible zip to close it with the pens facing out. Then, it stands like a pen cup. I really like that, even though I never use it as such. The best part of this pen case for me is that it’s not finicky and it opens wide. When I’m working, I don’t want a pen case with a small opening that I’ll have to fumble through, I want something that the contents are visible at a glance and that I can simply throw everything in. The only organized part of this is the front pockets, where I keep the eraser, pencil sharpener, and (of course) my daily fountain pen.
I carry a lot to school. I want to mention the alcohol markers first, because Winsor & Newton is my favourite brand for them. I have the greys in a bunch of different shades and a healthy stockpile in a drawer so I can just pick up more instantly. I go through these quite often, and the price-performance is so good. I think they dry a bit quicker than the famous Copic’s, so you need to work fast with them. It’s not a problem for me, because I don’t work on hyper-realistic stuff, just sketches. They’re amazing because the bullet tip has a cap that comes up to a point, with a roll-stop too, and the flat end has a flat cap. I don’t even have to look to see if I’m picking up the correct side or anything. I’ve been using them less and less though, because they don’t scan very well on the school’s printers and require extensive touch-ups to make it work as impressions.
Next up are fine liners, the lifeline of any art or architecture student. I like the Winsor & Newton ones a bit more, as their shape is a bit more comfortable to hold, but I ran out of a bunch in school one day, and our school’s shop only sells Staedtler ones. They get the job done, the only problem is that you really have to hold them perpendicular to the page. They’re not forgiving of writing angles. This was a less of a problem with the Winsor & Newton ones or the Pelikan. I got the set of a bunch of sizes, and use the 0.5, 0.3 and 0.1 regularly. Pelikan is my go-to sketching-writing fine liner. It dries to a shiny black that I love, and has a good 0.4 tip that doesn’t wear down quick. They were included in our welcome pack as a 5 colour pack in school and I misplaced mine for a while. I can assure you that they still haven’t dried out in 5 years, though I’ve started to use them more regularly during the past couple of months. The Artline 200 fine liner was a great tip from my high school art mentor, and now I can’t imagine life without it. It’s a grey fine liner, which lets you add dimension to shadows a lot more than a slim 0.1 fine liner. It’s quite a bit chunkier at 0.4 tip size, but it works.
I love sketching with ballpoints as well, so I have a healthy stock of those. I’ve read that a lot of artists love the BIC for sketching, but I never enjoyed the messy goopiness of it, so I like my Acroball or the Tombow Monograph the most. I can talk about how great the Monograph is for ages, especially since it comes in a super fine needlepoint tip. I think it’s the thinnest ballpoint I’ve seen in here. The Pentel Calme multipen is great to write with too, and the gel pens are usually reserved for writing. They’re nice and smooth, but don’t behave well with our sketch roll’s onion skin-like paper. It doesn’t dry quick enough and smears terribly. Though I’ve been feeling purple lately, so I’ve been using the Zebra Sarasa in that dark purple quite often to jot down notes. The last one is a good old Muji gel pen, and I also keep a healthy stock of that in black and blue-black. There are no Muji stores in the Netherlands, so I had to buy them in France a very long time ago.
No architect’s pen case is complete without these Paper Mate Flair felt tip pens. Seriously. I’ve seen these and similar versions of a bullet-shaped felt tip pens in every single person’s hand. Usually black, but I prefer the coloured ones because they make seeing the marks on floor plans or sections easier. They’re comfortable to hold, leave a nice solid line of colour, and they’re just great. I love them. Even my teacher loved them. Oh, one word about the grip, I genuinely think it’s one of the most comfortable pen grips out there, the flare really helps.
Then, we have the rest of the Pelikan’s coloured fineliners. They’re good to have for leaving notes or feedback, I don’t use them too often. I ran out of the blue and the pink ones because those were the best colours, the blue’s ink even had a red sheen.
Now, my favourite part! Mechanical pencils. I always make an underdrawing for all of my sketches in pencil first, and usually I’ll reach for a mechanical one. The Pilot NeXtage Shaker is my favourite for writing or quickly sketching out multiple ideas because it has a soft grip and a wide body. The Tombow Monograph Shaker is my favourite all-rounder, though I wish I could find it in a soft grip too, my callouses would thank me a lot more. It has a finer tip, so I can use it with a ruler too. Pentel Graph 600 is also nice to have, as it has the most distance form the grip to the tip. I usually use it with a ruler to draw on cardboard and such for models or detailed drawings. I don’t love the metal grip, but at least it’s not as sandpaper-esque as the Rotring ones. All of my mechanical pencils are lightweight because I can’t use heavy pens or pencils, and they all work with a 0.5 lead, so I don’t have to carry more than one type of lead.
Next up, we have wood case pencils. I like to keep them around even if I don’t use them super often, because there is nothing better than to unzip your pen case and get a solid whiff of that woody pencil smell. I use them for loose sketches or underlining while reading most of the time. I prefer a B or a 2B so that it’s dark and a little soft to use without applying too much pressure and it can be built up nicely as necessary. I had picked up the Faber Castell 9000’s as a test because I heard that people quite like it, but I found that they’re dry, chalky and not very dark. I like the Staedtler’s Mars Lumograph quite a bit, it helps that it’s a cheery blue too. Koh-I-Noor’s Hardmuth 1500 is a pencil I’m just super used to, and picked up a handful when I first moved to college. I used to use them during high school for drawings, and they’re quite cheap. It helped a lot when I was going through a lot of pencils in the first year of school when they were teaching us how to sketch. They’re good enough pencils, but I have to admit I prefer something a little more special lately.
I have the Kaweco Sport fountain pen and the Pelikan Pina Colada. They’re nice to have pens, especially for lectures or seminars, as they are a lot easier to write for a long period of time. Of course I can’t leave the fancier pens out.
Now, I’ll move on to the “helpers,” things I keep around to make drawing or writing easier for me. I love this pencil extender, because it’s lightweight and lets me use pencils until they’re very small. I don’t even know what brand it is, it was the cheapest one I found some years ago in a random art supply store. Honestly it’s the one that works the best for me, even though I have some fancier aluminium or rubber ones. Seriously, if you don’t have a pencil extender, you’re missing out big time. I can change all the pens and pencils in this pen case, but this little thing will stay in there forever.
Next up are the pencil sharpeners. I keep forgetting them at home, just leaving them on my desk, and now I’m trying to make a habit of putting pencil sharpeners into my pen case when I see one around. Apparently I’ve been overdoing it. These are both super nice pencil sharpeners, the Staedtler one is the one I usually take it to school because it’s lighter and works well with coloured pencils. M+R brass one is heavier and feels really nice in the hand with its shape. It works great, though I’ve seen some classmates eyeing it, so it’s best kept close by. Now that I’m looking at the close-up pictures of them, the M+R’s pencil slot looks slightly larger too.
Of course Tombow’s Monograph line has to make a comeback with the iconic eraser. Once I discovered this one, I’ve stopped buying other erasers completely. I like that they come in different sizes too, though the small one is the best one to carry around for me. The lead is also from Tombow, though I don’t think I’ve ever bought a different lead in my life. I never really experimented with pencil lead, and I’ve used this one since I was a child. Usually 0.5, either in B or 2B. I like my lead dark.
I don’t carry this pen case around very often, but I’ll mention it because it’s cool. Eastpak pen cases were the ones I grew up with, I probably have this one since fifth grade. They’re indestructible, though their openings are a narrow. I usually straight up dump this on my desk to find the coloured pencils I need. I prefer aquarelles, as I tend to use markers for shading and it blends in beautifully. Though these Derwent Studio ones were again included in our school’s first kit, and I used up most of them. Especially the brick colour, blue-greys or the soft greens. There’re a lot of brick buildings and overcast days in the Netherlands, okay? As I used them up, I replaced tham with the Caran D’Ache Supracolor II ones. I also added some more range to the colours I use the most, a couple more darker green shades and some different terracotta colours for brick shading. These are softer, slightly oilier, and have a tiny bit more intense colour. Now that I’m looking at the colours in the picture, I’m confused where the most used colours are, because some are definitely not there. I’ll have to dig them up later, though I don’t use colour pencils often as... I don’t know, I feel more comfortable with fine liners? My boyfriend thinks my sketches have a cool B&W Watchman-like quality to them with strong shadows and bold lines and I like it.
I have to admit, I’m not much of a hobby sketcher. I want to do it more and feel more comfortable with drawing, but I tend to think in words rather than images. It’s sometimes hard to get started when you’re looking at a completely blank page with a pencil in the hand. Maybe it’ll be my new year’s resolution...
Thank you so much for reading! One of my favourite things is to look at what people carry around and I’ve probably read or watched a million of them, no matter how staged they are. When I’m drafting on the computer, I put on some Youtube playlist of Vogue What’s In My Bag even. It’s super fun to me, so I hope you enjoyed it as well!
Disclaimer: This post is not sponsored by any of the companies mentioned. All thoughts and pictures are my own.