Strathmore Comic Boards

In the past, I've bought a lot of Blue Line Pro boards. Pad after pad they always seem to bleed on me. When I say bleed, what that means is when I'm drawing a line with pen and ink, that line starts to look like a caterpillar with all those legs because of the bleeding. I actually still have quite a few pads that are useless to me for inking. I buy a pad, pull out a page and ink one line, then it bleeds. Which makes the whole pad useless for me.

A package of Strathmore samples was sent to me recently. That was very kind of Strathmore. They started making Bristol boards with pre-ruled blue lines with comic book dimensions on the boards. So I inquired about the boards and they sent me these samples. Here's what was included.

Two packets of 11x17 bristol boards, 200 series and another I'm not sure of. A smaller pad of Bristol boards in the 500 series surfaces. A pamphlet/comic called Attack of the Sequential Artist with different artists testimonials about strathmore products they use and how they like it. A folder of Bristol & Illustration Board which consist of small swatches of different boards, thickness, smooth and rough. This will come in hand in choosing which boards to buy and the difference of each. And finally, a sample pack of Illustration for Wet Media.

The quality of Strathmore boards are up there when using it for pen and ink. The ink won't bleed and drys faster on these boards. In the past, I would buy these big pads of Strathmore drawing boards for pen and ink. I would cut them down to size to match comic book boards. The extra cut up boards, I would just throw away. Seems like a waste of money because Starthmore boards can get expensive compared to other brands out there.

I'm glad Strathmore is producing these comic book size boards. Not only are they already cut to size, they also have the blue lines mark ups for print. And the good new... They don't bleed.