The KUM Long Point Sharpener

The KUM Long Point Sharpener that I have is made of magnesium, which is light weight, and has flared sides for easier holding and twisting. The KUM is particularly well suited for sharpening cedar writing pencils. The wood comes off in thin shavings and the pencil ends with a long, smooth, clean cut — contrast this to the rougher finish of your typical hand held sharpener.

The long point is great when you’re writing for long periods of time. Not surprisingly, the KUM Long Point is my preferred hand held sharpener. It does a great job on the pencils I use the most and an especially good job on the Uni and Hi-Uni pencils, which are, by my estimation, the best made pencils around. On these, there’s no rough, jagged points, just perfection all around.

I tried the KUM on the engineered wood of the Staedtler Wopex to poor results, however. Only a sharp grinding from my mounted sharpeners will satisfy the Wopex.

I highly recommend this tool if you’re looking for a quality sharpener to carry around.

Trial by fire

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to do a lot of drawing on big paper — very big paper. I was drawing on rolls of 48 inch wide colored paper, mostly black.  I made 7 foot tall drawings that I would then trace over onto other sheets and then cut out. Finally, the cut outs were glued to red roll paper that was stapled onto frames. The end products were used for a fund raiser and people loved them. People posed next to them and took pictures.

Of course I waited until the last week to do everything, from constructing the frames to settling on the designs, drawing, cutting them out, and then recreating them after some accidents with a certain dog and spray fixative. In the end, I made six figure drawings and put down a lot of lines.

The time crunch made me work with confidence and efficiency. I got everything together: paper, tape, and I prepped by sharpening dozens of pencils before I began a piece. Once I got started, I didn’t want to have to stop for anything. Well, the hours of drawing were a great test for the supplies I had chosen. I leaned on my tools and here are some results:

The vintage Eagle Verithin in Yellow Ochre (No. 736), of which I have many dozen, performed admirably. The color went down nicely and stood out on the black paper. I now feel vindicated in buying so many of these on eBay. When I had first bought them, I had some buyer’s remorse, wondering what the heck I was going to do with so many yellow pencils. Yellow’s not suited for white paper in general, but the pencils worked nicely on black paper. Random art supplies to the rescue.

The Pentel Hi-Polymer eraser did a good job of sufficiently erasing large areas and not tearing the very thin black paper even while I worked quickly back and forth. When I had to remove the yellow color completely, it did a great job of that, too. Eraser shavings piled on the floor.

I did have one miss, though. I tried using the white, modern Mexican-made Prismacolor and while great for indicating the final (preferred shapes) they were, ultimately, a disappointment. The colored core was not bonded properly to the wood, so the core got pushed out the other end. I wanted to continue using the white, though and fixed the problem by using painters tape on the exit end. I won’t be buying these anymore. Trust me. A real shame. The white was soft and bright on the black, and stood out in stark contrast to the black and rough yellow sketches. These pencils are typically a dollar a piece and are total junk.

In the end, the Verithin once again performed admirably and the Pentel Hi-Polymer eraser earned it’s place on my drawing table. But bye, bye, Mexican-made Prismacolor. Thank goodness for eBay, where old art supplies wait for their final destinies (to show up their modern would be successors). I’ll definitely be looking out for a box of American made white Prismacolors with a bonded white core to wood case — nice concept.