Friday, December 18, 2009

What is the best way to draw beneath an oil painting?

I am learning to paint in oils, and I prefer to start with a sketch before I start to paint. What I have been doing is drawing in graphite directly onto my canvas board, then painting over it. However, I would like to do a full sized drawing on a piece of paper then transfer it onto the canvas. I was thinking I could cover another piece of paper with graphite or charcoal, put that face down on the canvas, then put my drawing on top of it and trace it. Is this the best way to go about doing this? Are there other materials besides charcoal or graphite that I can/should be using? And what about fixing the drawing--what can I use to keep the paint from smudging the drawing that will not destroy my painting in the long run?What is the best way to draw beneath an oil painting?
Just buy a roll of Saral graphite transfer paper, attach it to the back of your drawing and trace it onto your canvas. You can use the graphite paper over and over again if you take care of it. To save your drawing on your canvas to keep it from disappearing, mix a solution of 4 parts to 6 parts shellac thinner to 1 part shellac. Depending on how you like the ground use either 4 parts or 6 parts. 4 parts shellac thinner to 1 part shellac gives a more slick surface. Brush it onto your drawn on canvas and this will pretty much seal it to the surface. use this technique only with oils.What is the best way to draw beneath an oil painting?
I work in oils so I know what you mean. What I do is use a piece of charcoal to sketch in the drawing. I only need a loose idea of where everything will be placed. Then I 'beat' off the excess powder with a towel. Something like beating a rug on the clothesline with a tennis racket. Enough of the charcoal will remain on the canvas. Then 're-draw' using a fine brush and thinned down paint. The pencil markes can show through the oil paint but the painted lines are easily covered up as you continue to develop the painting.
I can think of two other ways to transfer your drawing. Use a projector or use carbon paper. To protect my drawing, i apply a thin wash (underpaint) over the area i am to paint and let that dry completely. Now i can paint and if i feel an area of my painting is not coming out the way i want it, i can gently wipe and my drawing remains undisturbed. My art can be checked out at hellosanantonio.com under artist name ''Guerro''.
Your method is called a 'rubbing', which is fine for some techniques.


There's another way of transfering your image to your painting support called 'pouncing'. It is age-old (you can see traces of it on Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel) and is just as good as your method.


What you do is draw your image on heavy tracing paper. Flip it over, place it on a soft surface like a large felt pad. It needn't be as large as your drawing because you can move the image around. Then, go around the lines with a sharp needle making pin pricks every 1/8th of an inch or so. When you are done, place the tracing right side up (with rough surface up) on your surface. Tack it in place. Grab a stick of soft vine charcoal and lighty scribble some lines all over. Take a blackboard eraser (your pounce; you can also use a soft cloth or a piece of felt) and, with a light hand, smooth your pounce from top to bottom. Lift paper. Your image will appear in dotted lines. Fix the charcoal with a spray fixative. You can remove any mistakes with a clean chamois cloth.





HINTS: You can also use a tool called a tracing wheel, but you cannot get small detail from that. There is also a commercial item which garment patternmakers use, called a perferator. It runs like a hand held sewing machine but without thread. However, it is expensive and I'm not even sure if they make them anymore (I got one in the '80's and then it cost $500].


Double up your tracing paper with another, lighter sheet of tracing paper so it will not tear easily.


Mark your tracing on the top center FRONT and TOP so you don't get 'lost'.


Reinforce your tracing with scotch tape around the edges; you don't want this thing to tear.


Keep your tracing in place by taping it to your canvas board. You can also mark each corner with an X on the reverse side and rub it off on the surface or use push-pin holes to 'mark' your place.





This method is great if you are using the same image repeatedly, i.e., something intricate, or if you want to do variations on the same image. However, detailed work is best done with the rubbing method but that is very tedious.
If you make a drawing on paper and want to transfer it onto a canvas, tape the drawing face down onto a lit tracing table or tape it up on a window with the drawing facing outside. You should be able to see the drawing through the paper and trace over the lines with a charcoal pencil (not a stick). After you are done tracing the outlines, take the drawing and tape it to the canvas and re-pencil the original drawing with a colored pencil so that you are sure not to miss any portion of the drawing. The charcoal on the backside of the drawing will transfer to the canvas or whatever you decide to use as the painting support.





I wouldn't use graphite on the backside of the drawing because the graphite will eventually show through the painted surface and you don't want that. If you are worried about the charcoal pencil smudging while the work is in progress, then you can use Burnt Umber thinned with turpentine to ';fix'; the line drawing.
You can buy graphite paper that does not smudge easily at any on line at art store. Trace your are work off your sketch pad with tracing paper to simplify your drawing but you will still have the main one that shows shading and detail. Then place the graphite paper underneath face down on the canvass and retrace with colored pencil,so you know where your traced lines are. This will neatly transfer the drawing onto the canvass.


Also you can project the drawing onto the canvass using a special projector sold in art stores.

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