Since their invention and subsequent proliferation in the mid-20th century, ballpoint pens have proven to be a versatile art medium for professional artists as well as amateur doodlers.
Low cost, availability, and portability are cited by practitioners as qualities which make this common writing tool a convenient, alternative art supply.
[8] The popular Spirograph, mass-marketed in America during the advent of 1960s psychedelic culture,[9] included colored ballpoints (black, blue, red, green) as part of its boxed set.
[10] Artists now professionally employing ballpoint pens often cite classroom boredom as a factor allowing them to explore the writing instrument's creative applications.
Korean artist Il Lee, living in America, has been creating large-scale ballpoint-only abstract artwork on paper since the early 1980s (see gallery below).
[1] American artist Lennie Mace, living in Japan, creates imaginative artwork of varying content and complexity applied to unconventional surfaces including wood and denim.
[14] British artist James Mylne, based in London, has been creating photo-realistic artwork since the mid-1990s using black ballpoint pens (shown at top).
[27] Brazilian street artist Claudio Ethos often sketches his concepts in ballpoint pen before spray-painting the images onto walls or canvas, and includes them in exhibitions.
The immediacy allowed by ballpoints makes the pens ideal for quick sketches, convenient while traveling,[35] and appealing to artists for whom sudden creative urges cannot be side-tracked by logistics or lengthy preparation time.
[14] Aside from standard ball-point sizes of fine or medium, the points of some pens are manufactured at multiple point-sizes—some in series with point-sizes ranging from 0.5 to 1.6mm—allowing for broader applications.
[30] Finely applied, the resulting imagery has been mistaken for airbrushed artwork[40] and photography,[21] causing a reaction of disbelief which artist Lennie Mace refers to as the "Wow Factor".
[42] Additionally, "blobbing" of ink on the drawing surface and "skipping" of ink-flow require consideration when using ballpoint pens for artistic purposes.
[42] Although the mechanics of ballpoint pens remain relatively unchanged, ink composition has evolved to solve certain problems over the years, resulting in unpredictable sensitivity to light.
[4] Photographing or scanning artwork is recommended for artists wishing to permanently record the ballpoint originals, from which archival prints can be made at any time.
In America, Jack Dillhunt uses full bedsheets to create his ballpoint drawings "because (he) couldn't find paper big enough," earning him the nickname "sheetman".
[46] Alighiero Boetti, part of a generation of Italian artists which in the 1970s came to be known as Arte Povera, has used ballpoint pens in various ways throughout his career, particularly his later calligraphic pen-works.
A large number of artists, none particularly associated with the medium, were provided with a blue ballpoint pen and a sheet of letter-sized paper to create artwork for the exhibition.
[55] For Lennie Mace's 365DAZE project he spent the full year of 1998 driving around the United States, doing a drawing-per-day, embellishing in ballpoint pen whatever found-media he came across in whatever part of the country through which he happened to be traveling.