Pencil Magazine reconnects us to the tactility of the humble pencil

Sasha Wizansky, a Maine-based writer and visual artist, is interested in pretty niche magazines. In 2007, she co-founded Meatpaper with journalist Amy Standen, a printed quarterly journal exploring meat culture through origins art and journalism. With a background in art books, book binding, letterpress printing, and drawing, her creative endeavours led her to another idea in 2012 – something called Pencil Magazine. What began as a thought experiment turned into thinking out loud – “could you create an entire magazine using only pencils and paper?” she asked her husband.

13 years later, we have two issues of Pencil Magazine, a hybrid text-image publication that includes drawings, comics, essays, poems, diagrams, and other experiments – all created with graphite pencils. Inspired by her teenage phase of drawing still lifes in graphite, the first issue of the mag took form of a tribute to that younger self. “Over time, the project has come to represent more than just graphite; it’s a kind of resistance to the fragmented attention of digital media. It’s a space to explore the richness of analog experiences,” says Sasha.

Setting itself apart from other magazines, Sasha and her team mostly reproduce work at 100 per cent scale, preserving the immediacy of the original. With distinctive handwritten text and the friction of writing in pencil, a tactile and intimate connection is created between the reader, writer and page. “ I’ve come to believe that using pencils cultivates patience and strengthens attention. We’re also fascinated by the creative possibilities that emerge when you impose tight constraints — like the small scale and graphite requirement,” says Sasha.

In Issue 0 of Pencil Magazine, the theme was pencils themselves. In Issue 1, the theme is attention – to craft, to drawing, to details, to life. The upcoming issue aims to be about erasers, staying within the parameters of the pencil to pull out all of its possibilities.

There’s something so humble about the ordinary pencil – we use them in school and you can forge a strong connection with a particular pencil, but like the best of analog technologies, they are liable to break, wear away and become obsolete. “There’s something profound about how a tool so simple – cheap, accessible, nearly universal –can hold infinite creative potential. Entire worlds can emerge from a single pencil,” says Sasha.

For Pencil Magazine, it’s incredibly important that they push back against technologies that profit from our attention and mental health – and move towards the therapeutic quality of drawing and writing with pencils. “I’ve felt how these technologies chip away at my sense of agency – manipulating me into spending more time than I intended. When I step away from screens and pick up a pencil to write, draw, or when I read a book, I just feel better: calmer, more grounded,” shares Sasha. Pencil Magazine aims to reclaim attention to something simpler, even primitive – this crumbly grey metal that we owe much of our art culture to.

Buy Pencil Magazine Issue 0 and Issue 1 here.