Saturday, July 11, 2015

Eraser tip

Do you know why your eraser sometimes will make a hard-to-erase dark streak on the paper?

Because there was finger oils on the eraser.

So: don't touch the parts of the eraser that you use on the paper. 

(I had to learn this from comic creator extraordinaire Dave Sim (Cerebus). You'd think somebody would have known and mentioned it in the 500 books I have read about making art and the materials, but nope.)

Cerebus: Dave Sim's 3,000-page "comic book" about... God, the Universe, and Everything. 
(No kidding. 300 issues. Took 24 years.)

6 comments:

Ol'Ben said...

And here I thought it was deterioration of the eraser itself ... ozone or something.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Nope. I think they last for many decades. I have one, twenty years old, good as new.

If there are black graphite spots on it, just rub them away on scrap paper before using it.

Anonymous said...

off topic... Eolake, have you seen this nifty video series "100 years of beauty" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oxCXlGKTlk

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thanks.
Interesting.

Some of them change a LOT, like Vietnam:

http://youtu.be/VZE-HTTt1gI

CalgaryMark said...

And I thought the pink rubber tip was for chewing ;-)

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

It is. The eraser on pencils is crap. To have one which works well, just get the ubiquitous Staedtler Mars Plastic. That minimalist white block has ruled the roost for forty years for good reasons.