Blackwing Blog

You cannot fully understand a place or the people living in it without understanding the paintings, writings and songs created on its soil. Blackwing 73 celebrates Lake Tahoe and other landmarks that have had a comparable impact on...

In 138 BCE, Chinese explorer Zhang Qian set out on an expedition west. The journey lasted more than 13 years and laid the foundation for the Silk Road, a trade route that was instrumental in opening up communication...

The Blackwing 530 celebrates these eureka moments of the creative process. Its gold barrel and striped gold ferrule symbolize the feeling of “striking gold” when that moment hits. The model number 530 is a tribute to Sutter’s Mill,...

The Blackwing 56 pays tribute to the Yankee Clipper during the 75th anniversary of his famous streak. The blue pinstripe barrel is a nod to the uniform he wore with the utmost class and dignity, while the gold...

With the reveal, the focus was on what was on the pencil; how we took the entirety of Georges Mélies’ A Trip to the Moon and fit it on a pencil. Today, we’re going to look at how...

Using a process known as movie barcoding, we condensed A Trip to the Moon into individual bands of color (shout out to Melvyn over at Arcane Sanctum for his awesome open source movie barcoding program). We then set out...

When we started brainstorming ideas for our second Volumes edition, we knew we wanted to show a different side of the program. The 725 was a musician’s pencil: loud and in your face. The 211 is just the...

Read about how the idea of Blackwing Volume 725 came to be. Hint: it has to do with music, specifically the Newport Folk Festival. Learn more here.