How I Got My Pencil Crayons And Pens

Gentle Reader, I am going to move away from the controversial and the socially relevant and talk about something innocuous, innocent, and rather boring.  That's right, today this blog, Content Under Pressure, goes totally twee.  Your humble scribe has controversy fatigue.

Just the other day while having coffee together, a friend who is a local and well known and highly respected social activist, wanted to know where I got all my art materials for drawing.  He noticed the seemingly hundreds of pencil crayons and coloured ballpoint pins spilling out of the little carrying case that I squirrel out of my goody bag every time I want to sit down to draw.  I told him a little bit.  Now, Gentle Reader, over to you and you get to read the whole story:

It all began with a former artist friend who wanted me to start drawing more, as she believed that would help me as a painter.  I don't mean that she's a former artist, she's a former friend, I would imagine she is still an artist.  I have one of her paintings and she has one of mine.  Our friendship ended when she accused me of feeling sorry for myself when I was distraught one Christmas eight years ago and was reaching out to friends for support.  When she responded that she didn't feel sorry for people who felt sorry for themselves I promptly ended the friendship.  Regrettable, perhaps, but I don't want people in my life who have zero or near  zero empathy.   Still, to this day, I regret ending the friendship, feeling now that a little patience and tactful communication might have gone a long way between us.  I say this after burning bridges with a number of people last year.  Even if they deserved to get kicked out of my life I also have suffered from my own lack of kindness.

My former artist friend was good enough to give me a set of water colour pencils, a set of twenty-four or so in a tin box, Faeber-Castell, which is a very good make, that I carried with me on my second trip to Costa Rica in 2008.  I had a very twee way of using them.  I brought with me a bound hard cover sketchbook (black cover of course, and blank white pages, very old-fashioned) and wrote in it as a journal of my trip, interspersing the writings with colour drawings of exotic birds, some of them Costa Rican, of course.  It turned into a lovely way of attracting people's attention while I was there and starting many interesting conversations in Spanish, while my level was still intermediate.  I can't say I was overjoyed with the quality of my art but I was generally pleased with the potential.

I basically forgot about the pencil crayons for another four years.  I was working with a Colombian client, a lady who spoke only Spanish.  She sometimes took me shopping with her.  In one of the branch London Drugs I noticed packages of coloured ballpoint pens, Staetdler, which like Faeber-Castell is another good German brand, ten different glorious colours in a package of ten for all of six bucks.  I finally bought some and experimented.  I was, as they say, sold.

On a trip to Mexico City I took the pens and pencil crayons (or, water colour pencils) with me, noting how well they work in combination.  Here is a sample, a drawing I recently gave to my Peruvian friend on the occasion of his birthday.


It's actually brighter than that, but it's still pretty good, eh?  I did a whole bunch of coloured drawings in Mexico City that year, 2013, mostly doing abstract renditions of black opals and fire opals.  Then I started doing birds...Again.  Back in Vancouver I bought a package of sixty coloured pencils on sale, the Deserres store brand for ten glorious dollars.  Not great in quality but still not bad.  Those went back with me to Mexico City and the city of Puebla in 2014, where I drew birds, birds and more birds, and had more interesting conversations with friendly strangers, this time in advanced Spanish.

I returned to Vancouver and this time splurged on forty-eight colours of Prismacolor pencil crayons, the Rolls Royce of pencil crayons and sixty much cheaper but almost as good Crayolas.  A friend who has given up on drawing gifted me with a plastic box full of unused, gently used and rather well used pencil crayons, all colours of course.  Some of these I brought with me to Colombia in 2015, where in Bogota, I devoted tonnes of hours to interpreting some of the birds of Colombia in the pages of a sketchbook some friends had given me.  The purpose of this sketchbook was to fulfill several dreams I have had of finding myself in a reading room, antiquarian book store or library opening up old books all of beautiful plates of colorful exotic birds.

Just last January one of my supervisors from work gave me two boxes loaded with quality Faeber-Castell and Prismacolor, mentioning that one of our clients had found them.  The next day, that same client mentioned that he had found them in the garbage while dumpster diving. By this time they were already in my home as I hadn`t been warned of the potential hazard.

Within days, tiny insects began to appear around the new pencil crayons.  I didn`t know at the time that they might be larval bedbugs.  I began waking up with small red welts on my skin, not many, and assumed they might be an allergic reaction to the medication I am on for my thyroid and pituitary.  Having never seen bedbugs before, as well as having quite a capacity for denial, I didn't have a clue what to look for.

I spent March back in Bogota, with a new sketchbook that I began to fill with drawings of birds of Colombia.  I returned to Vancouver  and the first morning I woke in my own bed my left arm was covered with red welts.  Again, I assumed an allergic reaction.  Then the bugs began to appear with more welts.  On my request my building manager checked my unit and found nothing.  More welts and weird looking streaks and spots on my bedding.  After yelling and screaming loud enough they finally did get in an exterminator who took a month and a bloody half to get rid of this modest infestation.  His bad attitude came free of charge.

My supervisor, when informed of the bedbugs and their likely origin, batted not an eye.  She said nothing, did nothing, became difficult and emotionally abusive, and eventually I had to ask for her to be replaced.  In the meantime, I have continued with the pencil crayons and pens.  They are no longer contaminated with bugs or their eggs, since getting them treated.

My ex-supervisor has just gone to work somewhere else.  We are still not on speaking terms.  Maybe I have to start being nicer to people.  Or maybe there are going to be consequences to not being a doormat?

I am taking my art materials with me to Costa Rica this March.  I continue drawing every day, often in cafes, sometimes at home, occasionally at work as appropriate.