Joseph Cowles, in a July 29, 2000 e-mail:
Barks' drawing for me was done on Strathmore bristol board, the same material on which he drew most of his duck stories.
The exception was that period of several years in the late 50's when his characters got to looking rather weird and stretched out. Barks told me that the problem came about as a result of the publisher supplying him with inferior (non-Strathmore) drawing board, which had a soft surface that caused his blue pencil sketches to create grooves in the paper. This made his sharp Esterbrook pen points do peculiar things when he went back over the pencil lines with ink. As a result, over a period of several years, struggling to use the soft paper, he somehow got in the habit of drawing the ducks taller, more upright. When he finally realized what the problem was, and got back to using the good paper once more, he virtually had to teach himself how to draw the ducks all over again.
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