From print room to high art

In Hungary in 1938, a young journalist found himself constantly frustrated by the quirks and limitations of his fountain pen. He noticed that when the ink used to print his newspaper was spilt, it dried almost instantly. So, Lazslo the journalist, and George, his chemist brother, set to work on making a thicker version of the same ink and a pen which could deliver it. They invented the ballpoint pen, or biro, and went into production with it when they fled from Hungary to Argentina to escape Nazi persecution. Their first bulk order was for the RAF, and since then then pens have kept rolling on and on and on.

In the image below you can see Lazslo on the left, and an image on the right by a young Portuguese lawyer called Samuel Silva. Click on the image and it will take you to a gallery of his work. Hard though it is to believe, every single image is created with a ballpoint pen, of the kind that you and I throw away each day. Some of the images take up to 50 hours to create. Talking about his ‘hobby’, Silva says:

It’s not about what you use, it’s about how you use it

Nuff said, I think. Click below and see the images for yourselves – they truly are astonishing.

Images: http://i38.servimg.com and deviantart.com