Lucy Louise Knisley
Comics: Stop Paying Attention, My Addiction, Contributing Artist to "The Worst Stuff, Like Ever"
Website: www.stoppayingattention.com
Making comics since year of: 2002
Art education/schools attended: The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Tools
Pencils: Pink, Col-Erase lightfast pencil. The pink is pale enough that it is easily eliminated digitally, and is easy to differ from any blue guide-lines.
Inks: Windsor Newton waterproof black, although it's hard to find these days.
Brushes: Right now I'm into the sorta cheesy brushes you can buy at craft stores. They have these big, squishy finger holds on them, which makes even the skinniest, 000 brush feel nice in your hand, and not cramp up.
Pens: Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, or the superfine PITT pen from Faber-Castell.
Paper: Aquabee, large-sized grid bond layout. It makes the straight and intersecting lines easy, and the pink pencil shows up nicely against the grid. Or smooth bristol, for supersexy illustration kinda stuff.
Lettering: I have a font of my handwriting from Fontgod.com, but I generally use brand new Faber-Castell Pitt pens, in superfine, to letter.
Color: I've recently been using scanned watercolor pages, combined with the clone-stamp tool in photoshop. It's a nice combo, I think.
Layout/ Composition: Teeny thumbnails in bic pen, to dimensions on graph paper.
Convention Sketches: Pens belonging to the cartoonists with whom I share a table, and who are trusting enough to leave their pens out for my nefarious use! Then I give them back and buy my own.
Tool timeline: I used to be big into sharpies, I think because I often didn't draw on paper (read "the walls of my art room). I think I liked the lightheaded effect that the fumes had on my artwork, too. Micron pens were next, but they irritated me because I'd wear them out in a day. Their ink was too transparent, and the line too shaky. I started using the PITT pens about three and a half years ago, and I still love them. I started using inks and brushes about two years ago. Last Summer I finally bought myself a much-coveted Pentel brush pen, like Hope's, and have loved it, and used it constantly, ever since.
What tools you'd never use, and why: Rapidographs! I love them, when they're working, but I've destroyed about five rapidograph pens over the course of the last five years, and ruined many a clothing item in trying to clean them out so they'd be usable again. Those things clog immidiately, and smudge like crazy.
And lastly, any advice you'd like to give: The best way to find out about tools is to chat with a group of comic artists. At my first convention, I saw people whipping out pens I hadn't known existed, and now these are some of my favorite tools!