Printing Variations on a Theme

HP Envy 4520

Recently I purchased an inexpensive black and white printer to facilitate the process of character development. Using graphite transfer has been a mainstay for many years but I wanted to speed up the steps involved and save my hands for the actual drawing part. 

I go through reams of the Georgia-Pacific 110lb white card stock, filling a 2 inch three ring binder almost every month with sketches. I find the surface pleasing to draw on because it has a bit of tooth but is smooth enough to hold detail.

About a week ago a couple of little girls faces popped out onto my paper. Curious as to who they were, I pushed them around a bit and got the feeling they were European street kids from the earlier part of the 20th century. "Rag Girls" as well as the word "Gypsy" kept popping into my head. 

I scanned the first sketches and taking them into Photoshop, I set up a document with repeated faces. Before printing I placed a layer filled with white over the top and slid the opacity down to about 80 percent, just barely enough to the faces coming through. The image above is darker than I would print, but for the purpose of showing up here, I made it a bit darker, you get the idea. 

Some too old

By having the pale image on the page, I could shift the facial features slightly while retaining the overall shape. It is extremely easy at small sizes to add just a bit of a crisp edge to a nose which instantly makes the character appear older. Having the profile image faintly printed I could erase easily without removing the entire structure. I specifically chose profile for this part of the exploration because I was trying to nail down certain ages, between 8 and 12. To me the nose and forehead in profile help establish the age.

I generally create a super quick character template for each face and body type, and again using the scanner and printer I can create many variations on a theme without losing the basic shapes.

There were three distinct girls that came out to play over those few days and I wanted to know who they were, and of course to eventually draw them happier. The first two original girls seemed sad or concerned which can be seen in the lineups below. I don't know what the influence was, they just came out of my pencil that day.

Pardon the transparent dress on the girl below. After I had quickly sketched her and decided to spend more time on her, I erased out her dress and sketched in the basic body shape to see if the proportions were correct underneath. Sure enough her upper arm was too short so her elbow did not fall at the waist, which I corrected in the next group.

The Far Left on Top and Bottom are 

the 2 Original Girls

Second Batch

While I was working on them I saw an Instagram image stating it was Holocaust Memorial day, and suddenly I knew who they were. They were the lost children of World War II. In a conversation on Instagram I commented on a quote I saw in a holocaust article, they were "the children the Nazis hated. . . Jewish, Romani, and African".

As always, I cut all of my sketches apart to view them independently and sort into like kind. Sometimes a new direction will show itself and by having them sorted I can decide if I want to follow it. I literally have piles and piles of little sketches that are generally half print and half fresh graphite experiments. 

Yeah, I don't think so, but fun

And of course there are always those crazy pages like the ones above where I go out on a limb with my playing but those go in the scrap pile if unusable or into a stack for use in perhaps another story. I had planned to sketch teenage older sisters but was probably watching a contemporary BBC drama which influenced the age and time period. So I just had a bit of fun with them.

When I have devoted 12 to 14 hours a day for days of hyper focus (can't seem to stop myself until I have finished the process), I am able to sit down and sketch the character out quickly without any prints because I have memorized their facial characteristics and proportions. In fact I see their faces when I close my eyes. . . they become real to me.

And the bonus is I have tons of sketches for my mother to choose from. The one below, or very similar to it, followed her home on Mother's Day! It is the best of both worlds, traditional and digital, and allows me to have created tangible pieces of process art instead of only tracing paper scraps or purely digital images.

Cheap printer, card stock, and mechanical pencils for the win! 

Transfer Your Sketch with Gel Medium - by Karyn Raz

In a recent post, Jen Betton outlined many different methods for transferring your drawing. I'd like to demonstrate one that's great for preserving the initial gesture in your drawings. In short, you photocopy your sketch and use gel medium to secure it onto the surface you’ll be painting on. For me, that surface is usually wood, but this approach also works well on illustration board.

Note: this method is best for painting in acrylic. Painting on top of gel medium is not recommended if you’re using water-based paints like watercolors or gouache.

Here’s how it’s done.

1) Sketch.


2) Photocopy your sketch.

3) Cut the photocopy down to size.

4) Cover the surface you’ll be using with gel medium. I recommend Liquitex Glossy Gel Medium or Utrecht Matte Gel Medium. 

Use a flat, medium-sized brush.

Try to spread the medium evenly so it doesn’t clump.

5) Place the photocopy on the surface and press thoroughly. 

6) Apply another layer of gel medium onto the surface of the photocopy. 

7) Blow dry the surface, occasionally pressing to make sure the photocopy is flush with the surface.

Now you’re ready to paint!

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Karyn Raz makes art in Santa Monica, California.

Drawing Transfer Methods

The part of a painting I love the least: transferring the drawing. After the labor and time to get the drawing juuuuuust right, I have to copy it onto a new surface in order to paint it. Here are the different methods of doing this and their pros and cons.

Just draw directly on the painting surface:
Pros: This method ensures the freshest drawing - it IS your original you paint on top of! You can do it anywhere, on any surface, at any size.
Cons: if you are using washes (thin acrylic, ink, watercolor), erasing can abrade the paper, and pressing too hard with the pencil can create grooves - both will change how the paper reacts to your paint or ink.

Luciograph/ Opaque Projector: Old 'Lucy'. Both of these machines take your drawing and project it onto a flat surface. You turn off all the lights and trace the projected lines onto your painting surface. I used a luciograph all through school. When I went to the Illustration Academy at Ringling, Lucy was in an outdoor closet. Now imagine yourself locked inside a completely dark closet, in Florida, in the summer. The heat is sweltering, but you've got a thick sweatshirt on with the hoodie up and drawn tight around your face because otherwise the mosquitoes that live in the outdoor closet will eat you alive! One time the back, metal lid of the Lucy fell open into my face, neatly skinning my nose. See why I don't like transferring drawings?

Opaque Projector

Pros: Aside from my personal fights with Lucy, a projector method is great for quickly resizing. You can also use any thickness of paper.
Cons: You can run into problems with the projector slipping just a little over the time it takes to copy your drawing, so that parts of the image are just off from each other. So, copy the most important parts first, and make sure you check your image by turning the lights back on again periodically. The other problem with this method is you need access to this piece of equipment, which is not an option for a lot of people once they are out of school.

Lightbox: You sandwich your drawing behind your paint surface, use a well lit window or a lightbox to project the drawing up through the paper.

Drawing over a lightbox.

Pros: Windows are everywhere, and you can see your new drawing pretty clearly as you work.
Cons: Must have thin enough paper to see through.

Graphite Transfer: This is the method I use now. You use a piece of paper that has been prepared with powdered graphite. You sandwich your drawing on top, the graphite paper (face down) in the middle, and your painting surface on the bottom. Be sure to tape the top of your sandwich to the bottom (drawing to the painting surface), and let the transfer paper float in between. You then redraw your lines on the drawing, and the graphite powder will reproduce the drawing where you press down. Since I don't like ruining my original drawing, I scan it and then reprint it at the size I want. This also lets me size up or down from the original. I use a blue ball point to draw over my lines, so that way I can see where I have already drawn.

Pros: It's easy to make your own transfer paper, cheap, and can do it anywhere, at any time. You can also use thick boards and canvases with this method.
Cons: You end up re-drawing a lot, since the trace is clumsy.

Printing: If you have a thin enough paper, you can run it through your printer. I tried this method for my last piece and it worked pretty well, although I missed using my thick illustration board.

Pros: This is great because it reproduces your exact drawing, quickly.
Cons: you are limited by the size of paper your printer takes, and the thinness of the paper.

Collage: You take the original drawing or a print of it and use matte medium to paste it onto a thicker painting surface.

Pros: This captures your original drawing, and is very quick. It can work well for acrylics or oil.
Cons: You have to work on the surface that the drawing paper & matte medium creates.