Non-Reproducible Leads

Back at the beginning of the year I tried out Uni –ISH coloured leads and got rather interested in coloured leads. Far far away, Glen Mullaly, an illustrator from Canada read that posting and started thinking about mechanical pencil non-reproducible leads, and that maybe it was time to give them a go. Glen had previously submitted a guest article on his modified pencils, and I was interested in what he was doing with blue leads, so asked if he would write a guest article on the subject. He said "sure", so here we have it, Glens guest article.
Thanks Glen,
Dave

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Feeling Blue?

Non-Repro Blue (or Non Photo Blue) was once a common tool used by editors, layout editors, animators and illustrators in the print industry. It was a shade of blue that was undetectable by film cameras shooting layouts and art for print use in black & white. This was useful since in pencil form it allowed for notes to be made right on the flats without affecting the image or, in the case of it's use by illustrators (like me!), it saved having to erase the underlying rough pencil sketch from an inked, finished illustration. For an artist on a deadline this could mean big time savings and so it was widely used by many in the magazine, cartooning and comic book fields. As the scanning of art took hold and the film camera faded from use in the print industry so did the non-repro blue pencil. But in recent years there seems to have been renewed interest as more and more artists have come to take advantage of improved scanning, imaging and printing technology to once again utilize the wonders of this invisible blue friend.

Many artists use a blue pencil for all their work. My methodology is a little different as I use a combination of light-table, regular mechanical pencils, non-repro blue mechanical pencils and non-repro blue ink-jet printing depending on the job. A typical pen & ink illustration (of a manageable size) might consist of these steps...

1. Rough, small pencil sketch on paper with regular H mechanical pencil.

2. Scan in, blow up sketch to full size and print out using ink jet printer. Use print out on my light-table as underdrawing to produce finished tight pencil sketch on new sheet of paper. If my rough sketch was tight enough I might skip this step and go directly from step 1 to step 3.

3. Scan in, use Photoshop to convert image to shade of non-repro blue (about 75% Cyan) and print out on inking paper. Depending on the job and the print size of the work I may do this in sections.
4. If my initial sketch was fairly tight I may go directly to inking (going over the blue lines with black ink) or if not I'll finish the sketch using my non-repro blue mechanical pencil (you knew I had to get to this eventually!!!) and then to inks.
5. Scan in image as either a bitmapped image (preferred) or grayscale. Then in Photoshop, after converting to grayscale (if necessary), by either adjusting the levels or using the channels I remove any traces of the lines left by the blue - and then I'm good to go. Whew!
6. Colour and finish.
As I said this is just how I approach some of my jobs, every illustrator will have their own preference.

Now to the leads......

Once I decided to start using blue pencil again I searched out my local art supply stores. Non-repro pencils are harder to find these days.
Many use the Prismacolor Verithin. But since I'm a mechanical pencil guy (see my previous post on customizing MPs) I had to find blue mechanical pencil leads.
I didn't turn up much. It basically came down to the Pilot Color Eno Soft Blue 0.7 and the Pentel Blue 0.5.

So I use them both!

The Pentel is the better lead, longer lasting, harder (rarely breaks) and best of all it's 0.5, my preferred size. Unfortunately it's shade of blue is darker than the standard non-repro blue so it requires a light touch (I'm usually pretty heavy on the the old MP) and it doesn't disappear as easily in Photoshop as it should.

On the other hand - the color ENO is the perfect shade of blue, BUT....it's much softer (it easily and often breaks) and only comes in a 0.7 size. So the choice is yours - 0.7 / softer but great colour, or 0.5 / harder and a little dark.

Hope this helps. If you've found other blue mechanical pencil leads out there that you like be sure to leave a comment and let us know! Here's wishing for blue skies ahead!
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All photos and illustrations by Glen

You can see some of Glens stuff on his website and flickr.
http://www.glenmullaly.com/
http://www.glenmullaly.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/glenmullaly
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See also this follow-up posting "The Great Blue Challenge"