Posts Tagged: underdrawing
Transferring a Sketch to Your Printmaking Block
As a follow up to my last post about creating an underdrawing for a painting or collage, which you can find here, I’m going to talk a little bit about how to transfer your image onto the plate or block for making a print.
So, you have an image you want to make a print of but now you need to get it onto the block or plate. How can we do it? Well, there are actually a lot of options, and I’ll go over a few of them here.
First, you can obviously draw directly onto the plate. For linocuts, this works fine. You can use pencil or pen, though there’s a tendency for the drawing to smudge or smear while carving the block. You also need to keep in mind that the image you draw on your block will print in reverse—if you have lettering or other elements that need to appear in a specific direction, you need to make sure they are drawn out on the block backwards!
Another option is to take your drawing or image and scribble over the back with a thick layer of pencil. Then you place the image on top of the block and trace the design. Keep in mind that the image will again print in reverse from what is drawn in the sketch using this method.
If you need your image to appear in the same orientation as the drawing (as in, not reversed), you can first trace the design in pencil on the FRONT of the drawing, then turn the paper face down onto the block. Next, you can scribble (or trace, if you can see it) over the image (from the back) using a pencil to transfer the pencil lines on the front onto the block. This method is a little more time-consuming, since it’s multiple steps, but your image will appear reversed on the block, which means that the final printed image will not be reversed and will look just like the drawing.
A bit easier that the pencil transfer method is using carbon paper or transfer paper. I switched to this a while back and it’s So much easier! Also, a lot less messy. You place a sheet of transfer paper between the block and the drawing (make sure the darker side, which is what actually transfers, is facing the block), then trace over the drawing using a pen, pencil, or stylus. Keep in mind, as always, that the image on the block will appear reversed in the final print. You can always use the two-step method above to trace the design onto the back of the paper, then trace that reversed image onto the block using the transfer paper. A lightbox can be a useful tool for retracing your drawing on the back, if you are having difficulty seeing the lines through the paper.
*Kingart Graphite Transfer Paper
*Artograph LightTracer Light Box
You can also use a projector to transfer the design, but unless you are working on a very large plate or have a projector that can focus very close to give a small image, it’s probably not an ideal method.
What tips or tricks have you found for transferring your image onto a printmaking plate or block? Tell me in the comments.
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I’m Terrible at Drawing! How Can I Draw the Sketch for Paintings and Collages?
Let’s talk about underdrawings today. An underdrawing is a sketch of a design that is drawn on the paper, canvas, or panel prior to painting or otherwise creating the final artwork. The underdrawing serves to guide the artist during the creation of the piece and so is a critical part of the process—if the underdrawing isn’t right, it can be incredibly difficult to correct the composition while working on the piece.
I confess, I actually don’t like drawing. I mean, I can do it, certainly, but it’s not something I do for fun. I’m definitely not one of those artists you see running around with a sketchbook, constantly drawing everything. But I can’t deny that drawing is a critical skill for creating my torn paper collages, paintings, prints, and other types of art.
“But I can’t draw!” I hear some of you saying. Well, the good news is that there are some ways around that.
The most common method you see in drawing classes is probably the use of a grid to help get the proportions and angles correct. It breaks up the overall composition into sections and allows you to concentrate on the shapes and lines without focusing as much on the overall image. While it’s generally seen as a tool for learning to draw, there’s no reason it can’t be used to help with creating an underdrawing from a reference photo.
To use the grid method, you just divide your paper or canvas into a series of squares, a bit like a chess board. You then do the same to the reference photo. You can also place a clear plastic sheet with a grid drawn on it over the top of your reference photo, if it’s something you don’t want to draw directly on. There are even grid tools you can purchase, such as these:
*QuicKomp artist’s drawing tool
Once you have your grids, you just focus on one square at a time and draw the lines and shapes exactly as you see them in the square. As long as each square is copied correctly, the entire image will be correctly drawn too.
Another useful method of transferring an image to your paper or canvas is the use of a projector. The method here is quite simple—you project the image onto your paper of canvas and trace what you see.
This is actually the method I use for most of my collages. Not because I can’t draw the images freehand, but because it speeds things up quite a bit and for a medium as time-consuming as torn paper collage, I’ll take any help I can get to streamline things! I usually batch my underdrawings by drawing out several pieces at once, so that I’m not constantly having to set up the projector and then put it away again (my studio is a bit too small to leave it set up all the time).
There are projectors made specifically for artists. They can be fairly expensive, but are probably a bit better for transferring images than some of the other options. As far as artist’s projectors go, there are two main types: ones you can place over a printed image to project it and ones that project digital images, like a slide or movie projector. Artograph is probably the most well-know brand, but there are some others out there.
The Artograph EZ Tracer Projector and the more expensive Artograph Inspire Art Projector are good choices for transferring from a printed image.
*Artograph EZ Tracer Projector
*Artograph Inspire art projector
Alternatively, you can get a regular movie/presentation projector from somewhere like Amazon and use that. As long as it will display still images, it should work reasonably well. The projector I’m currently using is of this type. It’s not perfect—since it’s designed to project images onto a very large screen, there’s a limit to how close you can focus, making it difficult to project onto smaller canvases or papers. But, it’s a good option for larger pieces. It’s still usable for smaller pieces but you might have to tweak the image file size or cropping to get it to a size that will be within the range of where the projector can focus.
Another option is to simply create your artwork on top of the reference photo—no drawing needed at all! This probably wouldn’t work well for most paintings, but would be fine for something like collage where you are gluing paper onto paper. Obviously, this isn’t a method you’d want to use if you don’t want your reference photo to be destroyed!
Have you tried any of these options? Do you have any other tips for creating the underdrawing? Let me know in the comments.
Want to stay up to date and see more of what I’m working on? Sign up for my mailing list here and get a FREE digital download of an exclusive tiger linocut print. (I promise not to be spammy with my emails—I hate that too!)
* Please note that this post contains affiliate links and any sales made through such links will reward me a small commission – at no extra cost for you.