After our first 12 weeks of fun stationery tests and putting a range of art supplies through their paces, we walk you through the art supply haul of classic and unexpected art materials we’ve covered on Stationery Test Drive in our first round of episodes.
We also do a de-factor sketchbook tour of the show so far, sharing all the other unrelated artwork or practice pieces we’ve each created with these items of stationery before. And we have some wine. Art and wine is a thing, surely.
Our YouTube Stationery & Art Podcast
Vishal: Hello and welcome to Stationery Test Drive. This episode is a bit different. Over the last 12 weeks or so we have shown you all of these various art supplies and stationery and today we’re just going to have a casual run through of them again, showing the work we did, some of the work we’ve done previously with these implements and we hope you have a good time!
And we’re drinking Sula Vineyards 2021 Zinfandel because what good is stationery without inebriation and the inability to run heavy machinery. I’m Vishal.
Minjal: This is Minjal.
Samir: I am Samir.
Vishal: And before we go, cheers to you, and to stationery!
So usually here we talk about stuff we’ve been doing but I think for a change let’s just say that for the past few months we have been making Stationery Test Drive. We’ve been making this show, each of us in different capacities.
I’m sort of the person handling the post-production, setting things up, making sure things are framed properly, which I hope they are because this is how we do our framing in case you want to know that. Samir, tell us about your involvement in Stationery Test Drive.
Samir: My involvement is in a … what do we call it?
Vishal: I would say that you’re our sort of resident historical expert. You find out the things that make the stories of these pieces, these tools. Many times they’re fascinating stories. If you’ve seen all our episodes you will know some of those stories, and if you haven’t, you (Samir) have a yen for history, please do that because we go into all sorts of fascinating things.
Like this pencil (a Red & Blue checking pencil) was possibly used in wartime, not this particular pencil itself, that would be quite a stretch! And who knew that this oil pastel had its origins because someone wrote an essay once over a 100 years ago calling for reform in schools.
So yes, stories like that are what Samir and Minjal dig up. Minjal, you’ve seen her work if you see in the show in calligraphy and so she’s the other half of the Inky Memo brand as a whole. Minjal tell us about Stationery Test Drive and just your impressions of it in fact.
Minjal: Well, I’m mostly a lettering artist, so these 12 episodes have been very interesting, in that I haven’t used most of these, possibly since school, some of them I’ve never used. So just trying these out has kind of also made me realize some of the issues that potential newbies could face and it’s been fun trying these out.
Vishal: So other than the history of what we kind of bring to it, how we started this show was, really as we record this it’s literally the last, late in 2021, so we have been in the Covid-19 pandemic for the better part of two years and as people lucky enough to basically be at home for two years.
Samir: And being able to work from home.
Vishal: And being able to work from home for two years. We have really watched a lot of YouTube, which is where you’re seeing this probably. Maybe in the future you’re seeing it on some 3d holographic projection where you can reach out and touch the things and drink the wine and in which case I envy you.
But yeah, we watched a lot of YouTube, we watched a lot of people talking about tools, talking about stationery tools and art-related things and it’s not like we noticed a gap in the market immediately, but we did realize that most people are sitting down with one of these pens and you know a really up-close macro lens camera and usually one of those nice cutting board, cutting mats with the grid lines and then spending maybe, you know sometimes a half an hour, an hour just making marks on the page which is very useful, I must say!
Samir: We just wanted to take a different, more casual, more conversational direction with it and I think that’s what we’ve tried to do.
Vishal: Yeah that is the basic thesis and premise of Stationery Test Drive, which is why it’s called Stationery Test Drive. I don’t know, do any of us know how to actually drive a car?
Minjal: Well, I did for a couple of years and then stopped because of Mumbai traffic.
Vishal: Okay, but I think you would much prefer these test drives.
Minjal: Yes, any day!
Art Supply Haul & Stationery Test Round-Up
Pilot Parallel Pen
Vishal: And speaking of test drives, we started off pretty much in order here. So one of the other things we said we’d do is just put out work with each of these tools. Some of them are tools made for writing, some of them are made for art and some of them are just completely different things, so we said let’s let’s actually use them and this was our first episode. It was on the Pilot Parallel Pen, which is this wonderful thing with a big flat nib – two pieces of metal stuck together and yeah we did all of this with it.
Samir: We’ll be linking to the original videos in the description (also in this transcript) and in cards during the video, so that you can go back and see the more detailed version of this, but this is just a quick run through of the last 12 episodes.
Vishal: And what we wanted to show on this episode in particular is not just the round up of what we have done, but other things we have done. Now, Minjal I think you have used the Parallel Pen the most, so show us more of your stuff. Okay, so this is a Christmas tree.
If you follow Minjal on social media, which you should …
Minjal: These are tattoo designs.
Vishal: Oh okay! So did someone get these designs yet?
Minjal: No, I’m hoping somebody will, maybe watch this video and come.
Vishal: Yes, please! If you would like these wonderful calligraphic tattoos please approach Minjal.
Minjal: Yeah and I’ve also been practicing the Italic Script.
Vishal: Right and this you did I think since the episode was shot.
Minjal: That’s right.
Vishal: Wow! So these are much more fluid but also controlled compared to these (the tattoos). These are more artistic, these are very different.
Samir: I actually love the place where it kind of fades off, the ink.
Vishal: Yeah we’ll try to get a close-up of some of these. I do like it because having these nice graphic shapes is great but I mean this sort of thing is very interesting, yeah, it’s very organic and I like it even when it does, maybe a full stroke, but it’s still a bit, the ink hasn’t quite come through. Tell us about this paper though. This is a specific thing for calligraphers?
Minjal: This is again the Rhodia Pad that I’ve spoken about.
Vishal: And these lines do you add them in?
Minjal: No, no. I mean there is a certain angle that you have to use for drawing the lines and for writing when you’re doing the Italic Script, so there is a bit of guideline involved in this.
Renolds 045 Red Ballpoint Pen
Vishal: Okay! So I think let’s let’s just keep these. We’ll just pile these any which way. The next thing we did was the Reynolds Red Pen. I think as usual I did, are we keeping these aside or are we making a big pile?
Samir: I think we can keep them.
Vishal: Look there’s at least 12 things for each of us, so it’s going to be a bit of a mess otherwise. We’ll put them all on here later on. Yeah this was the red pen, this was the classic Reynolds thing that your school teachers probably used.
Samir and I have used these before, so we have got some of our sketchbooks with us, where we have used these. This is one that I have called ‘Perfection is the Enemy.’ I think this might be from the gel pen that we did later in the year, but yeah this is done with the Reynolds 045.
I’ve really enjoyed using it and I’ve enjoyed using it on this very thin paper, it’s very insubstantial but it takes to a pen really well. We’ll come back to this book because there’s other things we did. This one’s also with the red pen, more successful this time.
Once you sort of start to learn these things and the variation you can get, the amount of value range you can get, as you go along and I think that’s it. Oh yes! One of my favorite pieces from the last year, something I spent a lot of time on and really shows the power I think of ballpens, is this.
All the red you see is Reynolds red pen and all of that is a Reynolds blue pen, so it’s the perfect example. I don’t have a blue pen with me but this is on very, very thin paper. So I’d suggest getting something smooth and thick if you want something that’s a bit more archival but even as long as it’s something that can take it.
This is one of my favorite mediums of drawing now and I did not really have much experience in it. In fact I kind of start these sketchbooks on themes where I think, okay I’ll just use cheap pens or pencils and you know come up with stuff and that is one of my favorite pieces I’ve done this year.
Samir: That’s great!
Minjal: Yeah, I think talking of cheap stationery, a lot of us, and I personally you know sometimes tend to think that the more expensive a stationery object is the more finished and better my output is going to be. But really this series so far has also been an eye-opener, in that you know these pens cost like six bucks in India and you can really produce such a wide variety and really it’s been great using the Reynolds.
Vishal: Samir, do you have any more ballpen work that you’ve done? You have done plenty of ballpen work in the past.
Samir: Plenty of ballpen work but not with the Reynolds and not with Reynolds Red for sure.
Staedtler Mars Lumograph Graphite Pencils
Vishal: Okay, but we’ll see more of those and maybe we’ll link to them or I’ll put them in the video as we like doing so far. After that it was another revelation, another great thing – The Staedtler Mars Lumograph pencils. We used the 4B and the 6B.
Once again calligraphy, illustration and more formal illustration, cartooning all of that, a great range to this pencil. Somehow I always was shy about using pencils like these because I thought they’re a bit intimidating when you see that whole set and you think okay I need to learn all of these. But I think the thing that I enjoyed just using the 4B and 6B for various purposes in the same thing. What about you guys, did you find these pencils different from any of the pencils that you’ve used before?
Minjal: I mean definitely much more smoother, and I don’t really end up using a lot of pencils for finished work, so making like a finished piece with a pencil was also a good experiment.
Vishal: And Samir you have done work with these specific pencils before.
Samir: I was introduced to these pencils maybe a month or two before we actually started this series and I did a series of portraits. I’m just going to show one here but I was extremely impressed with how much of a range they can produce and I blame the model to some extent, of course.
Vishal: Yeah, I mean if you were waiting for some hashtag #facereveal for our show.
Samir: This is as close as you’re going to get.
Vishal: Yeah, I mean look that’s Samir’s chest right there and the rest of it I don’t know! These might be my hands, we can’t confirm yet.
But yeah this was great! I know this is going to be a recurring thing, I don’t think we tried many things that we did not like and whatever we did try, we found interesting and novel uses, for us certainly. Maybe they’re old hat to people who use these all the time.
Samir: I think the realization that comes through with this series mostly is that yes, there are pieces of stationary which are maybe of a more professional level, there are some which are kind of throw away and cheap but as long as you can adjust what you do with them, you can get good results from pretty much anything.
Vishal: If you’re an enthusiast for stationery, I would say when you’re trying something new like this and this was, yes I’ve used pencils before but these (the blue Steadtler Mars Lumograph 100s) are a new-ish type of pencils for me to use, lean into what you know you like doing. If you like doing portraits, if you like doing calligraphy, if you like doing cartoony, lean into that and see what you can get with that medium in your sort of specialized interest of choice. So that was the Mars pencil.
Nataraj Checking Pencil, Uni Pin Fine Liner & Tombow Fudenosuke Pens
Vishal: I think this is the only time I’m going to get to do this outside social media, so I want to show you three things which is our next three episodes actually and I think these are all on the frame right now.
So our next three episodes were the Nataraj Checking Pencil, the Uni Pin fine liner and the Tombow Fudenosuke pens and as you can see these are basically the same illustration and it’s further to what I was saying, lean into what you’re good at or what you like doing. I like cartooning, I like coming up with new characters and creatures and things like that, so what I did for this, as I started here with the pencils, so this is in some ways the original drawing. And then I got a light box, which I know is cheating, and anathema and you can you can crucify me on your own time. But I used the light box to then do a version in the fine liner and then I used the same, I think I used the pencils not the pens, and the same light box to do this with the Fude pen. So why don’t you guys show me your three things because they’re different. You didn’t follow the same triptych.
Samir: You mean all the three?
Vishal: Yeah, why not? Let’s just mix things up here. Right.
Everything is quite different even if you consider the things that I did, that were basically the same three drawings, the same drawing rather three times. We all use fine liners a lot. I’ve used the Fude pen recently I’d say about like a handful of times. I used it to sign a book or to put a sketch in a book, it’s great to have on the road. What about you guys, did you use these pens for anything else? I know that these were new pens to you Minjal.
Minjal: Actually I use them a lot for modern lettering or brush lettering that I’ve learned last year. They’re actually a very handy sort of pen, like you said to keep with you.
Vishal: There is overlap between them which is why I could do three things that were the same, but I don’t think you really have a, as in you can have each of them and they’re quite distinct in what you can do with them. Samir, you have more things that you’ve done with the Fude?
Samir: Co-incidentally on Inky Memo itself, I think this was probably two years ago, we’d done the series for Inktober which used a set of hands holding origami, which you can see on Inky Memo.
Vishal: Yeah, we’ll put an insert shot of those.
Samir: So this set of hands was done with the fine liner, and these were done with the Fude.
Vishal: Wow, so co-incidentally both our pens are featured here, both in the same set, and yet they all fit well with the origami, of course, but also as you said together, I almost thought that was the Fude for instance, just the way that you’ve picked out the line, the hatching there. That is of course the Fude because of the gray, but I think the range you get out of both of these. You know you could you could tell me that these were both the same pen and other than the marker very heavy marker bits, I would not be able to tell.
Samir: So yeah, that’s quite a range.
Vishal: Minjal, did you have any other experiments with this pencil or did you try any more of this, by the way you talked about trying to use it for other things?
Minjal: No it still remains one of my most challenging objects tested so far.
Koh-I-Noor & Generals Carpenter’s Pencils
Vishal: Okay. Now I think after that, yes we came to a run of things where we weren’t all sunny and happy with how things turned out. Did we start with the? Yes, I think we started with the Carpenter’s Pencil.
Minjal: Are we moving on to Vishal’s General 4B?
Vishal: Okay, so this was with the Carpenter’s Pencil. These were really strange, flat, wedge-shaped things.
Samir: And we used very different ones. Vishal and me used the same one. You can make out the much lighter tone. We used the Generals 4B sketching pencil 531. And Minjal had this much darker tone one, which is the Koh-i-Noor.
Vishal: Which we actually discovered is much darker than the other one. You wouldn’t think there was just two stops of difference between them. And the thing is in our episode you’d see this say but I think I enjoyed using the 6B a lot better later on during the actual episode to make something like that.
Minjal: This actually if you’ll want to try any broad-nibbed calligraphy or broad-edged calligraphy, would really be a great practice practice tool.
Vishal: Yeah, because it is quite forgiving. Look at that, that’s the difference. Weeks later and I’m still not over it. But yeah, this one I think we might need to do a follow-up, a re-test stationary test drive.
Samir: Because this was just too much of an unknown.
Vishal: Yeah I would love to see what we do with this in a year or however long. But yeah, I think the results are promising. Let us know if you have used these for anything.
Masking Tape
Vishal: Around the same time you will have noticed that these are not pens or pencils, that’s masking tape and we tried and sort of not quite succeeded, but like managed to make some art with them. I still think Minjal was the most successful here in terms of making something.
Samir: Something that genuinely feels like it required the masking tape to be done.
Minjal: No, also because I used paper that was very different from the paper that you’ll used.
Vishal: This is one of those things which I would like to get some redemption on but you know you kind of you get a bit afraid of doing these things and thinking, it’s just bad or it’s or it’s not for me. But masking tape has such a wide variety of uses for art, not just for masking but I think we should try out. I’d love to try out just drawing on the thing you know, it has a surface, it’s sort of like paper actually, it’s like parchment in some form. So maybe we should come back to that at some point. Maybe, on a future round up we’ll actually show you things that we’ve missed or things that we’ve gone and redone with even things like this. Yeah, masking tape.
Samir: We can have in the future ‘The ones that got away.’
Vishal: Yes, the ones that got away. Tell us which ones you’d like to see more of. And that brings us to one of our favorites.
Hauser INX Jazz Liquid Fountain Pen
Vishal: One of something that I’ve done a lot of work with, which is this really cheap Hauser INX. What’s the full name, Minjal? We went over this in our episode?
Minjal: Okay, I’m going to look at this. Yes, Hauser INX Jazz Liquid Fountain Pen.
Vishal: Yes, which I used on this, but it being a fountain pen I used on this sketchbook extensively. It was called ‘Two Terrible Pages’, I used it pretty much just before the pandemic hit to sometime earlier in 2020-21.
And, so yeah, these are all with the same pen, there’s some writing. Not these, these are actually with the Rorito Fasty Gel, which we’ll talk about in a bit, which we have an episode of. But yeah, very good fountain pen, very good for drawing, very good for just lettering and getting to work.
Look at this, this entire book is pretty much the only this pen. There’s another pen here, which we will talk about in the future episode, also a fountain pen, also very pretty. There’s bits of random writing, you know there were times the last year when all I could do is just move a pen randomly on a page and hope for the best. And I should do a full walk through of this book at some point but here’s a quick one. This is the same Rorito Fasty, we talked about in a previous episode. Actually this one I think is a Nataraj Gel Pen or a ballpen, but again we’ll get to those cheap pens and good ways to use them. There’s 36 days of type in here as well. Samir you did 36 days of type using some kind?
Samir: Yes, I used the Hauser as well for this set, which started with 36 days of type and I still need to get to it but yeah, all of this is inked in with the Hauser pen.
Minjal: Is this directly with the Hauser, without any pencil?
Samir: No, I think there are definitely pencils for these. These require a sketch to start with.
Minjal: Yeah, but they’re beautiful.
Samir: Like all of my 36 days of type or any of these monthly challenge things, that’s as far as I got, but eventually.
Vishal: Eventually. I mean these things take time.
Samir: As you can see there are uninked ones.
Vishal: I don’t think any of us are very athletic-minded people who are willing to, you know, doggedly just do something every day, come what may. We do put a priority on quality and frankly just mental mood most of the time. So if it takes some months between or even years between things and we’ll take that time.
Samir: And something I missed before this is also a page done with the Pilot Parallel Pen.
Minjal: This is really nice!
Samir: So yeah, you can really get some very organic lines with it.
Minjal: We should do that thing where you’ll actually do some lettering with the parallel pen and I’ll maybe you know try my hand at illustration.
Vishal: Right, I think now we’re forming certainly a plan for a stationery redux, test drive redux, so we will keep that in mind for our next round ups.
Staedtler Luna Color Pencils
Vishal: Then we thought we’d potted around in black and blue and a bit of red for a long time so we did some color with the Staedtler Luna color pencils. Now I have not used colored pencils for years, so this is the only piece of color pencil artwork that I have at the moment. I think probably in years.
I don’t remember the last time I picked up colors for physical media. I’ve done it digitally because the workflow is easier and you can change stuff around. But how was it going into colored pencils, something that is almost considered juvenile or at least you know when you’re a young adult at most.
Samir: It was an interesting experiment. I was actually reading up on oil pastels for our last episode and there was this interesting story about schools in japan introducing oil pastels. But oil pastels were a new invention and they were more expensive. So the schools that couldn’t afford them actually went for colour pencils because they were cheaper at the time. They were the the instrument of choice that was recommended by German schools and believe it or not German schools liked coloured pencils because they were supposed to encourage discipline in the kids.
Vishal: I mean that is some pretty disciplined art. I don’t want to talk about mine here but maybe the Germans were on to something, the Germans usually are. They gave us pencils and many pens.
Rorito Fasty Gel Pen
Vishal: But speaking of more color things we are almost two more color things, but before that we went back we couldn’t we couldn’t resist the Rorito Fasty Gel Pen, which we love, which we have done many things with.
Samir: I think Vishal and me can do an entire episode on the things that we’ve done with this.
Vishal: This is another sketchbook of mine. This is all you know Rorito Fasty. We covered this in the episode as well. I have many more pages and pages.
Samir: I have done this entire book of botanical illustrations all using the Rorito Fasty. It goes on.
Vishal: Yeah this is a bit more botanical-esque thing, again Rorito Fasty.
Oh, actually this one’s the Unipin fine liner.
Samir: And just to show variety there’s also these very comic illustrations also with the Rorito Fasty.
Vishal: And this is a page that I enjoyed making, sort of a comic.
Minjal: You’ll really like the Rorito Fasty.
Vishal: It’s so easy to get going with it!
Samir: I mean the fact that you can keep this thing in your pocket and you can do both this and that.
Vishal: And that!
Samir: Why would I not like it?
Vishal: Yeah! There is something to be said for a versatile tool and that’s one of the tenets of this show, that we’re sourcing most of these from our stationery stores down the street in India, where we don’t have access to the greatest and best imported stuff all the time. Most of these things are cheap. This Hauser is Rs.50 which is like 75 cents I think, US. This is Rs.5 which is 7-8 cents. Even the imported stuff we’re getting are the Unipins or the Tombows are maybe the most expensive thing we have here and they’re a couple of hundred rupees like $ 4-5 imported. Maybe the parallel pen is more expensive than all of them.
Camel Kokuyo Student Oil Pastels
Vishal: But yeah you can do so much with so little, including things that you think of as just literally childhood things, like these oil pastels which we just did a bunch of very different things. And again, you would not think that these are the same set of oil pastels, cheap ones. These are Camel by Camel Kokuyo. Set of 25 is Rupees 100, that’s like $ 1.5 USD, maybe. That’s that’s pretty great that you can get this range of things from that. Again this we don’t have any other work in this because most of the time we’re working with.
Samir: Yeah, this is genuinely one of those things that none of us had used before.
Vishal: Yeah, I’d picked one set up, I don’t know why just on the web, maybe just to try it out, or maybe to even just give it to some some kids we know or whatever, but I held on to it and I’m glad I did because it’s just a good thing, whether you use it like a child or you use it with mediums and washes and trying to get it all smooth together or somewhere in between, it’s good.
Stationery Lover Ethos
Vishal: I think really I know people might be looking for hard-hitting journalism and criticism, but you’re not going to get it from our stationery channel because we’re enthusiasts and lovers.
Samir: And we like to scribble.
Vishal: And really if you can give us anything to scribble with and on, we are going to do. I think that’s pretty much it for our first 12 episodes. These are all the things you can see. I would urge you to watch the episodes by going to our channel and clicking on the Stationery Test Drive playlist. Just watch all of them if you want, watch some of them, pick a few now, watch some later. These are very much designed to be conversational and passive in some ways, as passive viewing I know that’s a thing that people put out there. Watch us while you’re doing your chores.
Samir: Watch us to relax.
Vishal: And if you do relax by actually using some of these things, please find us online we’re @inkymemo on more social media. Individually, I’m at @allvishal.
Minjal: I’m at @minjalkadakia.
Samir: I’m at @samirbharadwaj.
Vishal: And we are team Stationery Test Drive. This has been our first round up of our first 12 entries. We can tell you now that there’s going to be at least another 12 and another round up after that. They release every week on YouTube, unless you’re watching in the future with smell-o-vision and feel-o-vision, in which case here are hands, high five. Samir where are we finding you online?
Samir: At @samirbharadwaj and @papernautic for my paper art.
Vishal: Get some stationery, get some wine, get some beer, get whatever you’re drinking, relax, enjoy yourselves, make some art with all of this. We have catchphrases which we keep saying at the end of things and they just keep changing and mutating. But, cheers to you, cheers to everyone who enjoys stationery, who picks up stationery and continues to make things with it. We will continue to make things with it and make these videos for you!