Electric Rubbers

A couple of posts ago I said I'd tell you about the best purchase I ever made, so here it is. The item that I purchased from amazon for the staggeringly low price of £3.40 was an electric pencil eraser. I can't explain how good this item is, but if you are an artist or you do pyrography, please get one now. It is ironic that I should be so pleased with something so simple because prior to my purchase I had completely the wrong idea about electric erasers.

Let me explain

Many years ago, I managed a production unit in a large factory; the people I supervised were great and very hard working. From time to time in the course of a day's work I had to vist the design office to liase with the draughtsmen on various issues. When I entered their office domain I was always struck by the change of atmosphere. These people went about their jobs in a relaxed way that was totally opposite to the grindwheel spinning existence of the manufacturing unit. The difference in physical effort was astounding. The physical effort that came from the manufacturing people could power several lighthouses whilst if you measured the effort from some of the people who worked in the office environment they would barely be able to illuminate the inside of a small fridge. Having said that, I bet some of the office workers' minds were always in creative overdrive.

Anyway,

it was when I was talking to one of these draughtsmen back in the early seventies that I noticed he had an electric eraser. I didn't say anything at the time, but I thought it was the height of idleness that these people had to have an electric eraser to rub out their mistakes. It was a wonder they didn't have an electic spoon to feed them their breakfast cornflakes.

What's all this to do with pyrography?

Well, I've started doing more designs and found that when I wanted to make a change to a drawing, using a manual eraser wasn't very acurate. No matter how precise I was, I always ended up erasing some lines that I was happy with. I had to keep redrawing the lines and this is what produced the flashback to the draughtsman and his electric eraser. I had a light bulb moment and thought that perhaps they had electric erasers because they were more acurate and not because they didn't want to break sweat. Below is a sketch of the pyrography project That I'm currently working on.

It is a table centre piece depicting my drawing of a morning glory. The electric eraser came in very handy on this sketch because I had to reposition the winding stalk several times to make sure it had a pleasant but natural look. That's it for this post, but if you would like to see some more of my pyrography please click here. If you would like to find out more about me or my books click here.