Scribe

So if you followed my directions and you cut off your finger, thank goodness I live on the other side of the world.

Andy.

Hello. How you going?

Yep. Tomorrow is a bright day for everybody, I think, put it that way.

Yeah, sure. What have I got here with me now? I thought because it was a special show, I'd brighten up the point on a Blackwing 725. So I'm using one of those tonight just to make little notes myself. And I'm writing on a couple of different things. I've got one of the MD pads, which is. What would you say? The one that's got the two sides that are stuck. It's like a note thing you just pull off the notepads and A Life, A Four Noble Book, which I did write a lot more notes in just to keep myself on track. So that's what I've got in terms of what I'm making marks with. Yes.

My partner's been watching that in bed. And yes, when that. That happens, it's like, what are you watching?

Yeah.

Right?

So.

Nice.

I've been more, I guess, consuming art materials rather than graphite pencils. So I did go out and buy myself a set of the Luminance Caran d' Ache color pencils. That's a step up from what I've been using, I guess. Certainly in terms of the cost. But they are light fast. Every single color, I believe, is lightfast, meaning that they don't fade, which a lot of the color pencils do. I've given them a test run, and I'm quite impressed with those. So that will be my budget for a while because the set that I got was a box of. And yeah, they're probably the priciest pencils I've ever purchased. Scarier than a real Black Wing in some ways. But, yeah, they're very good. That's the. That's the. The nicest thing I've got myself recently. They come with a solid blender, which is really interesting. Like, blenders are usually a core and a pencil. This thing's a solid, chunky piece of almost plastic that blends the pencils. So they're really good. They're very. You know, it's. I think in regards to what I'm doing with my art at the moment. Yeah, they'll be my first step sort of thing. I'll go to. To draw anything new. Graphite. First year for sketching. But definitely these pencils, they're worth it if you are into color. I'm not sure if you guys are, but, yep, definitely worth it.

Oh, everybody is. That's the thing. I'll never say that every. Everybody can draw. Everybody should try drawing that. You've got a pencil in your hands, so you might as well do it. So, yeah, never say you're not talented, because that's the biggest. That's the lie everybody tells themselves until they learn they can.

Oh, yeah, and I did get hold of some new Viking pencils too, because I, as a local guy who's selling stuff from the Viking company, so I got this set of. I think it's 36. They're all HB, so there's not like a variance in them. But I don't know, I like the fact that I can have a different colored Viking in my pencil case every day. So, yeah, they're just a bit of fun.

I want one.

What?

Yeah,

Sometimes. I've got one of those IBM Electrographic. I've got a few of them, actually, the old IBM pencils. They seem to be good for, I guess, paperwork and. Yeah, I, I don't do too many, but that sort of thing. Like the test scoring style pencils, that would be my idea. I don't know where you go beyond that.

Most pencils down under don't come with an eraser, so, you know, most of the pencils I get from overseas all have the eraser in. But traditionally going back to when I was at school, you could never get a pencil with an eraser, so you could not make mistakes you weren't allowed to.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, definitely. Big crystals are the standard Biro, but not the blingy ones.

Yeah, that they're a bit new to me. Sound good?

Yep, we have it here. We've got typo. Yep, yep.

Yes.

Yeah, it's like a tease.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

But,

Yeah.

Yeah, I can relate to that. Whenever I try to get pencils from your side of the world, it's like, okay, I'm paying for more for the postage than I am for what's in the postage. So, yeah, it's. It's a hard thing.

It's the only way to justify it is to over purchase. So.

if I was over there, but I picked up a David Bowie pencil from an exhibition. That's probably the closest I'll get to you.

Is that about 10 hours, right? That sounds correct. Yeah. Yeah.

Tuesday afternoon, Yep. Also, it happens to be a public holiday in Australia, so it is our Australia Day. So I'm more free than I would be so it worked out very well.

That's awesome.

That is right. Yes, I do remember that.

Well, the real things looking a little bit. What would you say? The lines are a little bit more broad than they were before. So. Yeah, it's an old one.

Yeah.

Sure, yeah. I don't know how far back I'm gonna go. I won't go that far back. I did grow up in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne, which is, I guess, the almost eastern, sorry, southernmost part of the mainland of Australia. So I grew up in mountain areas, which it's sort of gave me a lot of spare time. So as a kid, not a sporty kid, I was more inclined to draw. And pencils, I guess, started as soon as. Oh, gosh, as soon as I got bored with AFL football. Don't know if you know about that, but it's a very male pursuit that I wasn't really that inclined to be part of. So, yeah, drawing started really, really early for me. I would get scrap paper from my auntie, who worked for a computer company, and she'd sort of give me a box full of that, and I just draw consistently. So I guess the pencil bug started a long time ago. I moved, I guess, naturally into the art. So I studied fine arts. Have a really expensive and quite. Yeah, got to use it more. Very expensive degree in something that doesn't have much of an income attached to it. So, yeah, very. I guess at the moment, I think after Covid and everything, I'm focused on sort of getting back into using my creativity. It's been kind of a savior because I've been working from home. So when I work from home, I've got the sketchpad as my backup and I'll sort of scribble as I go. So, yeah, in terms of, I guess, my interest in your community and how I found you guys, it was long in its development. It came from, you know, basically doing that for most of my life. I live in, I guess, an inner city area now. I am just starting a new bit of news. Some art classes and a little bit of an art school in Melbourne. So I've got a warehouse sorted out and I'm starting to put together my student lists. And yeah, basically I'll have a bunch of people who always wanted to draw, getting into drawing. So I'm sure I'll introduce them to your podcast as well. So you might have a few more Aussie people joining. They're all very interested. They're the people who always wanted to do it and never got to do it. So that's where I'm kind of now with, I guess using the art is actually to pass it on to other people and make it more of a, I guess, a community as well.

Yeah. Understand that pencils, I guess, are very useful and very portable. And the portability, I guess the art materials for me is important. The. One of the main tools for anybody who does art is their visual diary or their journal, whatever you want to call it, where you put in your initial drawings. You carry it with you all the time. Anything that you sort of research, study, annotate, everything's in that visual diary. So the pencil is still the best tool for that. A pencil has, you know, the ability to give you a lot of tone. If you need it, you can just write standard stuff. You press harder, it's darker. It's just really versatile compared to, I guess, other art materials. So you can't really carry your paints in your backpack to Do a quick idea. Unless you want, you know, a million people watching you or, you know, it's also very good. It's easy to bring out a pencil and sit on a train and draw somebody or, you know, go out into a bushland area and draw some trees. It's just a very versatile and immediate sort of tool to have compared to other things. Pens are good too, but they just don't give me the tone. I want the pencils already. I guess it's always been my main tool, even when I was a kid. I am a painter, so I do paint, but the pencil, I guess, has become almost more important than the paint. And I'll keep using them that way too.

I guess that's always developing. It's not something that I've got a set idea about because everything. And that's probably one of the difficulties of sort of pursuing drawing is everything you see is a subject. Everything you come across is potentially something you can draw and use. And filtering out things is very difficult. So I find it difficult anyway because I'll come across something new and all of a sudden I'm drawing it and it's like. Well, it doesn't really relate in terms of, I guess, context with what I've done prior. So I think I kind of work more like a journal artist at the moment where I will just draw things I see. But I am quite focused on natural things at this point. But not just natural things. It's the interaction between natural. So I'm doing insects at the moment, but, you know, where, where do you find them? Where are they located? So, you know, suburban insects around my local area. I want to put together sort of, I guess a survey of where these creatures still live, what they're about, and, you know, incorporate some of the environment. So it could be, you know, somebody's front doorstep. I'm really looking at using the technique because I think I've been a very technique focused person, like practicing drawing. Every time I come across something that looks interesting, I want to actually draw it. I want it to look like it looks. But you know, you can do that forever. But the ideas don't actually gel into like an exhibition, for example, if it's all just separate drawings that don't have any sort of connection. You put Them into a gallery. It looks like, you know, what's this person even thinking about? So there is a kind of a divide in the way I work. Yes, I do like to draw everything but I am actually looking at focusing on e topic subject. You know, having, having a conceptual aspect is something that I'm looking at doing this year.

Oh yeah, the redbacks, they're in my backyard. If you don't know, redbacks are like your black widows. They like, you know, live under your toilet seats and it's like that. No, we do have a lot of, I guess, creatures you have to avoid. But I'm living in suburbia in the city and really the worst thing you'll come across is a redback. Redbacks like your black widow, but they're very shy. They're not going to sort of chase you down the street. They're not that sort of thing. But we do have a local creek that's full of tiger snakes and brown snakes. They're terrible and quite dangerous to people and dogs and yeah, we just live with it. I think it's just part of this part of the world. But I've never really. And most of us don't come across, you know, the, the most dangerous of the dangerous unless you go looking for them.

Well, I, I didn't introduce that part of myself but for many years when I was in my say early 20s, I worked for and managed art stores. So I was actually in the art retail trade for a bit. So I had everything be pretty much every pencil that came into those stores. I would try but I was not always that impressed by, I guess what art stores offer. There are some good things in Australia. Mostly you get stapler pencils so you've got your, you know, your stapler traditions and the, the blue ones, the, oh, drops out of my head, what they're called at the moment, but just mainly stabler pencils. You might get some wolf brand pencils. I don't know if you've got those wolf. Have you seen those in America?

No, they're an older company. They kind of just make carbon pencils now, so not really graphite. So a lot of the art store pencils are going to be charcoal and carbon based, which has very little use for anybody else because they're just too dark and too smudgy. Unless you're going to be drawing something, you know, on a big piece of like cartridge paper, they're not that great. What other brands, really, it's just that. So even from myself working in an art supplies store and knowing all those, I wasn't really that convinced that I had the best pencil that you could find. So I did start that search and it was back in when I got sick of things. 2010, when the MMX kind of first started to be mentioned on the Internet. I actually just started this whole, you know, collecting side of myself by typing in what is the best pencil, you know, for drawing. And that just opened up everything. So art pencils, I don't know at the moment, and you'll probably be sort of very familiar with them, is the Japanese pencils, like the High Unis from Mitsubishi and the Tombows. Personally, I think they're the better art pencils that you can get for, you know, the fact that they. They come in like a 10B if you want to go that dark, it's quite amazing. And the quality of the graphite in those pencils is much better than what you get in art stores. So really, I mean, I also don't put a distinction between art pencils and pencils in general, because you can use anything to make art, really. And you were talking about big crystals earlier. Some of the guys that I know that I studied with would actually use the big crystal to do the most amazing realistic portraiture that you come across.

So, you know, it's what you use it for and it doesn't really, you know, you don't live by the definitions that people give things. I think that if you were to be, you know, open to whatever you come across, you'll probably have more luck with what you're trying to do because you're not sort of closing off those avenues. Yeah.

that

Oh, it's the thing. I mean, there are pencils that are getting there but some of my favorite pencils, unfortunately are out of production pencils. Things I've found that are old, I will find. I will talk about new pencils, but like the Eagle drafting pencil, which is also from your part of the world. I've not come across anything as nice as that. And I keep looking for modern things that have that, that angle. But you know, it still goes back to the Japanese pencils. It goes to the, the Mitsubishi pencils and to the Tombow. For art people, anyway, they've got the nicest, you know, it's, it's. They do produce a crazy amount of, you know, different degrees, 22 degrees, I think in that box you can get. But there's also, I suppose, the. When you draw, and I think it's also for writers too, you get that scratchiness. There's Conte put out some pencils that were okay, but they did have like a scratchy, occasional sort of bit of grit in their pencil that sort of made it difficult to draw without feeling like you're gonna rip a hole through the page. That is also part of it. If you get a pencil, it's really nice. Then all of a sudden it does have that imperfection. Yeah, you can throw a drawing away straight away if you just go a little bit hard and it just takes a chunk right out of the center. But I am, I think Japanese pencils in particular, Mitsubishi, I said it three or four times now. But if I'm going to recommend anything for people who want to draw, maybe getting hold of that high uni set, that's the art set, that's got 22 different degrees in it. That might be the, the go to at the moment. And I did notice on the actual Facebook page they've got another version of that which isn't their high uni pencils. It was The Green Barrel 9006, hundreds, I think something like that, where they've got 22 degrees of those too, they might be cheaper. But the person who posted that, forgive me for not knowing who it was, did say that the result was very similar with both. So there are some options out there. I would definitely look at those. Yeah, yeah.

Avoid? Yeah, I'd say give everything a go. But if you want absolute avoidance, anything that's really in the H range, unless you're using the best quality, like cotton paper that's, you know, it's tough as nails would say down here you can't really do anything to it. You can actually with watercolor paper that's like 300 gram, you can pretty much draw on it and hose it off if you want and then dry it off on the washing line at the back. It is made from cotton, so it does wash like cotton. So unless you're using that. I would avoid anything in the H range. I know some people like to sketch up in a light pencil. I don't, I just go for the darkest pencil and I don't even use erasers. You know, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. You probably just put that drawing aside and pick another piece of paper up. So I would recommend not getting hard pencils going for probably the darkest pencil you can get. First of all, because the nicest thing about artwork is the tone. If you start with heavy tone, you're going to end up with a better drawing. I would avoid anything from. Well, in Australia we've got things in supermarkets. Like there are brands in our, what do you call it, our stationary supply chain called Officeworks. There's a brand called Burrows which is just. No, please just, just don't do it. Because they're, you know, it's the same all over the world. That'd be the really cheaply produced, mass produced pencils from. Yeah, you know, from China or something that just, I don't know what they use in them. But it's not graphite. It feels like they've used, I don't know, a little bit of clay and a little bit of something that looks like graphite but it's not. Yeah, it's there. Actually. There are very bad ones out there. Woah. Picks. You can throw those away. Sorry,

They'll never, they'll never degrade. They're going to be there forever.

But yeah, I mean I'm, I'm reluctant to say, say don't try something. I'm more, more inclined to say try something, assess it. If it's not your tool, it's not your tool. And that's really, I guess everybody knows that. It's not something I even need to say. But you know, definitely, you know, if you're going to start drawing, go look at some pencils that have a grading system with them. I know you mostly have. I guess you've got the number two pencil and you've got a less of a grade system. But all of our pencils have always been graded that way. So you'd start at a HB and then start getting darker. HB 2B, 4B, 6B. And sort of look at those options if you're going to draw. That would be the main thing.

I mentioned paper. I think you've got to invest as much in the paper as you do in the pencil. If you use a really good pencil on a really bad piece of paper, that's just going to disappoint you straight out. Because they don't, you know, bad papers just add paper. That's all I'll say about that. I do use other things like paper stumps. I think most people who've tried drawing have seen those. You see them in art supply stores. They are just compressed pieces of cardboard that have been sharpened to a tip like I guess a pencil. Depending on your style of drawing, these things are used to blend things into, you know, a very sort of light gradation. They actually give you more of your detail looks. If you're going for high detail, you're trying to draw something as lifelike as possible. Using those blenders is very useful. I don't use generally hard erasers at all. The soft eraser, the only one I guess that I would use, it's a little bit harder. The Tombow ones, the click erasers, which are the. I've got one here. It's a mono zero by Tombow. It's just got a very, very, very thin, rounded eraser in it that you'd use to sort of pick out highlights. The one thing that I would erase for, the only thing I do erase for is really highlighting. So if I've gone too far, too dark, you get one of these little pencil style erasers and you can take out really sort of slight bits of detail that you probably miss and can just smudge over. Definitely. I think with pencils you do need to get a spray fixer and it is a workable fix usually. Do you know much about that or is it sort of a new thing? Fixative is kind of a way to keep things in place. And you can. You can get your initial drawing down, give it a really light spray, and then your hand passing across the page is not going to, I guess, smudge things as badly as it would if you did not. And you can finish off the drawing with that too. But I use that sort of through a process of a drawing so that, you know, I keep things in place once I'm happy. I don't need to take much off of that drawing, but I do need to add to it. I'll put a sort of layer of spray fixative on top to keep it nice. And usually it's quite acid free too, so it's good. Don't use hairspray. I think a lot of people use hairspray for that. That'll probably eat your paper away eventually. So art stores have spray fixative. I would definitely recommend that stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's some of it. But I don't erase much. I really. It's just a pencil and paper when it comes to graphite drawing. And I will use like a highlight arrays only. Yeah.

Sure.

Probably not. Yeah, you're right. I think it's all going to be, you know, slight hazard to your health. Unfortunately, that's part of. That's part of doing artwork. Like I did move from painting to drawing. And when I was painting, especially when I was at university, I was using signwriter paint, which is the thickest enamel that you could use on mirrored surfaces. I don't know how or if my brain has recovered from using that for that period of time because it was just. And my studio mates complained and. Yeah, but art is not a safe pursuit. You think it is, but it's not. You got to be really careful with what you use. And I've used everything the wrong way. So either I'm only alive because I've been preserved by the chemicals. I think at this point. Yeah.

Yes. My lungs are.

Yeah.

I think it was an art teacher many, many years ago. And I think it was even a Secondary. No. Yeah, secondary school. Who just saw, I think it was, saw us all using sharpeners. Like. Like every kid has a pencil sharpener in their pencil case with their pencils. And it was an art class. He just took it off me and said he'd never sharpen a pencil ever with a sharpener. He had a Stanley knife. Stanley knife. I don't know if you've got them. They. They're like craft knives. It's just the brand name we've got here, but they're just known generically as a Stanley. And just really quickly sharpened the pencil, handed it back to me, and I looked at it and I thought, that's not bad. That's. That's nice. I don't mind that as an idea. And I think ever since that point, I did, you know, you can't carry knives around in this country either, which is a bit of a problem because I've got. I always want to shop and buy, you know, knife. But if you've got like a craft knife or I think you call them exacto, in America, we just call those hobby knives. Yeah, it's just easier to get the point you want, especially if you're drawing. I mean, it's probably, you know, I have, although I have to say, come across some old pencils, like some vintage ones that have been sharpened by people. I don't know when, but a long time ago, where they've sharpened them really long and then they've put a wedge point on the end of that, so it's like a wedged end. And it looks like it was done for calligraphy, like oblique calligraphy style. And obviously it was more of a thing people used to do. I don't know. But that. That was really nice to find because I've copied that myself. I've seen that oblique end, and I will use that if I want to do a little bit of, you know, detail that might have something to do with a leaf. You can just twist the pencil as you draw and it gives you like a, you know, a changing mark that's not shaded or constructed. It looks really natural because you've just done it in one stroke. So really, I think the whole knife sharpening thing has come down to what I can do with a pencil, how I can apply that pencil to the paper. And just having the mark made that I want to make. And then again, you know, it gets into, okay, so what's the best knife? And it's turns into another pursuit. Yes.

If the thinner the blade the better, I guess. And that's sort of. I guess it makes sense if you've got a nice, you know, like a hunting knife with a big fat blade that's just going to be like. You put too much pressure on, you'll just go straight through the pencil.

You know, you want to use a thin bladed knife. And the two you mentioned are ones I've got to like. The Opinel, I've got the carbon steel, I think it's a number six and also the Higo Nakami. I've got two of those. One of them's on the tattoo that you mentioned earlier. So yeah, I've been using them for a while. The Higgin I sound made by the same craftsman apparently that make katanas in Japan. So there's the quality of the steel, I guess the edge retention and everything is going to be a little bit more special than the things you get from most stores. And they're not that expensive. But the sad thing is they're not training any more craftsmen to make Hugo knives. So once those guys retire, that'll be the end of them. They kind of like, you know, one of those dying art forms unfortunately. So yeah, if you've got a Higo knife, keep that for good because I think, you know, the quality of the actual blade is amazing and you don't need to sharpen it that much and it will cut through the pencil shape your the end of the point really nicely. So they're the two really good ones. I do have others. I even went into the crazy angle of making my own knives. So I built myself a forge in the backyard. Yeah. So I've made about three or four knives. After I sort of decided, well hang on, can I make a knife that's got that actual Shape that's going to be even better than what I can get from a shop. So I ended up making a few stuff, trial models. It was very dangerous. I've got scars. Wow. I dropped an angle. I dropped an angle grinder on my leg. I'd done all sorts of crazy things and then I kind of decided, well, if I get a workshop and I get a blacksmith to train me properly, maybe I'll do this again. But no. So I've made a couple little knives. I do have one I still use that I made which is like the Scottish. They call it sick and dub. So little tiny sort of dagger style knife which I kind of shaped my hand to. The size of my hand, the handles the right shape and it is a really nice little knife to sharpen with. But you know, would you send us

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I'll do that.

I'll find the other ones too, which are a little bit basic. But that one was the, the crowning achievement. But I think that's the one I dropped the angle grinder on my leg with. So, you know, that was where I stopped the things you do. I know, yeah. Everything's a rabbit hole if you're that way inclined. So I've been holding back recently on things.

Well, in. Yeah, with the audio format. Yeah. Good. It's like. Okay, so dude, it's going to be a bit of a imaginary thing.

Yeah.

I guess you.

I'm gonna just do my best. It's a good one. Being a right handed knife. In the right hand, of course, left handed. Hold the pencil but you kind of lay it across your fingers like and keep your thumb out of the way. You put the knife, I guess, where you want to start cutting. Hold them with your thumb and your first finger. With your right hand, you've got the knife. You'd Be holding the back of the blade against the pencil right behind where you're gonna cut. But you use that for purchase and cut, I guess slowly. I don't like. I've seen people do sharpening where they just go, you know, it's like they're whittling really quickly and yeah, it does sharpen the pencil but most of the time the pencils I've got because I use sort of H style pencils will break. So it's just a matter of really slowly doing that. And you can spin the pencil in your left hand slowly whilst taking off. Not too much, just sort of trying to keep that I guess the conical

Yeah, that's it. So if you followed my directions and you cut off your finger. Thank goodness I live on the other side of the world. But yeah, it's, it's a natural thing. You just got to sort of, you know, get the right size knife. So don't get yourself a great big thing. Get a smallish knife. Probably an exacto is a good one for everybody to give it a go if they haven't done it and just work slowly while spinning the pencil slowly. I even get to the point where I've taken the wood off as much as I want. I'll then scrape the graphite with the edge of the knife like almost at a 90 degree angle to the actual graphite to point it off properly. So I give myself the point I want by sort of scraping away the graphite. I don't use the knife to do the full point. I only use the knife to sort of take off the wood. Then I'll point it with the end of the knife like scraping, you know, scraping motion, if that makes sense. It just gives you a nicer point because the point I guess is the whole idea. You know, it could look very nice and I've done like. I don't know, I think, I don't know if I put them up on the website. But you sort of unicorn style pencils where I've gone in a circle and I've actually sort of done a spiral on the wood and it turns into a bit of a sculpture. Listened. But yeah, it's. So long as you actually focus on the point as the main thing it is going to be better than a pencil sharpener. Sorry. Everybody who loves their pencil sharpeners but I don't like them, I just don't. They're. They've only got one use to a knife has 20 uses. A pencil sharpener's got one. So where's the value in that? That's kind of how I think. I know it's a little bit. But, yeah, if people love the pencil sharpeners, fine. But if I was given the option, yeah, I would never use a pencil sharpener again.

I think I've said what I said about pencil sharpness. I don't want to be too negative or anti, clearly. You know, I think, you know, things like the hovel that people have got out there, that looks really nice, but that's kind of between the worlds. It's a. It's a pencil sharpener and a woodworking tool, and I think that's really nice. I like that one.

All right. I do have a Janus. Like a original 1930s Janus. And that one because of its, you know, the way it's made and good answer the angles. Like, it's just a pretty little thing. I did actually restore it to the point where it can sharpen pencils because it was a hold, of course. So I did work out how to re. Do the blade on it. So, yes, I do have a Janus. I won't carry it around that much, but if I want to have a nice play with something that is a pencil sharpener, that will be the one.

Yeah, I won't be using an angle grinder, so, you know, no more.

I guess in terms of art and I guess when I'm on the sort of the Facebook page and I see people looking at, you know, and sort of mentioning, oh, you're doing a good job, or, you know, I wish I could do that, I think people should just do it and not be so stuck in the idea that it's an impossibility. I think if you've got the interest in doing something creative, it's very important that you give it a go. I am getting back to teaching. Like my last few years have been out of teaching. I'm going back to that now. Doing it privately and also looking at options in regular high schools again. Every kid. Every kid. And I'm probably thinking more high school. Say you call it middle school. I think, Tim, you're a teacher of middle school. They just say they can't draw and they'll refuse to do it. And the problem there is the fact that they don't want to do it wrong. They feel like there's, you know, like if they make a mistake in front of somebody, it's against them for some reason. If we just tell people more often just to do it, it wouldn't be an issue. And I think creativity is innate in most people. Like most you guys write, it's the same sort of thing. You know, you spend the time with the words, you put together your stories by, you know, trial and error with lots of mistakes. And anybody who, you know, looks at any drawing or artwork that they like and thinks, I wish I could do that, I want them to try. That would be the only thing. Yeah, don't put it away. Give it a go.

I promise that she measure it. You measure yourself from that point. Take it from there. I mean, I've got a 12 year old son, he's just starting high school this year and he's terrified of making mistakes. And I just think that that's, you know, something that has to be addressed. Mistakes are what you learn from. You don't get things right straight out. Yeah.

Okay, I've got a few little. I've just built a new website which is more based on my classes that I'm going to run. But I am thinking of doing for those people who want to do a video lesson. I am looking at that as well. Because if we do shut down again, which is a possibility. I'll be running my classes via video anyway. So I've got our website that's just got the one sort of contact page on it, that is Luke Sinclair, artist dot com. I've got my more fun website, which is just me fooling around and putting stuff up. It's not a serious one, which is pencilism.net and I am on Instagram and Twitter, just Luke Pencilist or Luke Underscore Pencilist, I think for Twitter and luke.pencilist for Instagram. So, yeah, that's me.

Fantastic. Loved it.

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