Sketchbook Day 27–carbon copies 2 or tangled legs!

A request from Anne to do some drawings by monoprinting will be on its way tomorrow, so look out a small sheet of glass or plastic. A piece of old plastic wallet/envelope will do. This method is related to the ‘carbon copy’ method so thanks for mentioning it Anne. I was also inspired when I was saw Tracey Emin’s monoprinted drawings at the Hayward Gallery recently. If anyone else has a request for a particular method of drawing or a particular difficulty you need help with, please leave me a message either on my blog or yours or by email and I’ll try and oblige.

The Project will finish after day 30 and might continue on a weekly basis if requests indicate you’d like me to continue.

TODAY’S TASK – As the headings suggests, today’s method is a variation on carbon drawing. Perhaps this method is a more basic than yesterdays and should have been placed before it as it uses the idea of creating a carbonised surface with a soft pencil or a graphite stick to act as the carbon surface.

Draw on the next page surface with heavy pressure, using a hard, well sharpened pencil in the same way as yesterday’s method. Remember that the carbon drawing of the deckchair in the image below was done on to the back of that page.

Note that the carbon surface does not seem to reveal an ‘after image’ of your drawing, BUT you can now use it to do a drawing with your eraser. I chose one on the end of a pencil as this was quite hard and had an edge to make narrow lines. Oh, those legs!

A second bonus to this method is that the very heavy handed drawing you made to create your carbon drawing can also be worked into to make more interesting – again with the eraser. Use it to break up the solid, heavy pencil lines – just scribble over them with the eraser. I also added a few lines with my fine pen. Try this yourself to transform it from an over-heavy ‘beginner’ style into a light,’confident’ style.

TODAY’S TIPS – Place a piece of card behind your pages when scribbling with the pencil/graphite stick to stop unwanted indentations passing into neighbouring pages. Notice slight unwanted indentations from a previous drawing in the carbonised surface above!

Before making your drawing with heavy pressure to pick up the carbon, place a card below your drawing page and draw your lines lightly first to help you get it right. Then remove the card and go over your lines with a heavier pressure. An alternative is to draw your object on a separate page to ‘learn your lines’ first. Here’s a pencil sketch done prior to the carbon drawing to help me make sense of those deckchair legs!

Final tip – don’t draw a deckchair!