Friday, June 29, 2012

I need a hero!

A Hero calagraphy pen. Photo: Cathy Johnson
After reading Cathy Johnson's article from the Artist's Journal about illustrating with a Hero Calligraphy pen I was literally hooked.
I have been looking for a fountain pen that would encourage me to draw in a loose style. My continual personal fight is to try and forget my graphic training from my years in advertising. I aspire to a free expressive line, not easy to find when you have reached or maybe even passed middle-age. By the way, does anyone know what the official mid-life years are? When do they start and when do they end?

So after reading Cathy's article which was published on the Artist's Journal Workshop website I immediately followed her advice and visited eBay and started hunting for some Hero pens. I found two which I ordered from China, one for 6 dollars and the other for 12, not so expensive and I hope to have a lot of fun with them. The seller of the Hero 86 Calligraphy pen had a very impressive page on eBay, he even had a number of pictures of himself going about his export business with the help of his moped, cute, I wish him the best of luck with his business.  I have been buying a lot of art related things recently; I should probably stop ordering and start drawing instead - but shopping is so much easier than scratching that first uncertain line on a clean, white page!
If you would like to see the work of an excellent pen & ink sketcher who uses a Hero pen, visit Don Low's blog, I discovered him on urbansketchers.com

Hero 86 Calligraphy Pen (12 dollars)
Hero 86 Calligraphy Pen exporter!

2 comments :

  1. Oh wow, I too want one of those too. I tried one last year in Lisbon, it´s very different and fun to use. Do you have a link to the ebay page?

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  2. Hi, Yes, I'm looking forward to getting mine in the post. Here is the address for the seller on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330748394292&ssPageName=ADME:L:OU:GB:3160

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