How do YOU sketch in your drawing before painting?

[snuffy]

There are a couple of things you can do to keep the drawing from "migrating through" the paint. Use acrylic ink or fix the drawing w/ a clear acrylic medium. If acrylic gesso doesn't come through, then other acrylics, like ink and/or medium should be OK.

[nam26b]

Can someone suggest where to look for a thread dealing with what some of you use to draw on your canvases before painting?

Not that my paintings will be a beacon of insight, but I've tried just about every method of nderpainting/underdrawing. Here are two threads showing the two extremes:

This one is a fast sketch of a still life setup I did just to pass the time. As you can see, I had virtually no drawing, just a few lines in umber.


http://wetcanvas.com/forums/showthre...still%20l ife


Here's one where I did a detailed drawing:


http://wetcanvas.com/forums/showthre...still%20li fe

I hope it provides a little of the information you were looking for.

Nathan

[Eugene Veszely]

I just get a small brush, turpsy blue/grey and roughly place the images on the canvas....

[Wes Hyde]

I use watercolor pencils, which dissipate almost completely (if not entirely) when oil paint is applied.

Wes

[hblenkle]

I have used pencil, ball point pen, charcoal, and thinned paint to do a line drawing. Some gessoed surfaces smear graphite if you erase the lines to a lighter shade because they are too slick. That happened to me on aa canvas last week. I just painted and it worked out ok.
Harold

[cherrouq]

Originally posted by Chiers
I have many paintings that I started with pencil outlines and never erased. Not once have I ever had the pencil bleed and most of them are ten yrs or older.

For me bleeding is not a problem, but I erase the pencil to have a final clean outline, a brown ink show better the lines of the lay out, so me I'm obliged to erase all time because i begun creating my sketch on the canvas without transferring. If you draw a square and circle without erasing you must be a good drawer

[snakum]

From 'La Gallerie du Peanut' ...

With the thing I'm doing right now (my first Surrealist piece) I gessoed, sanded, and then toned the canvas with Burnt Umber. I then did an undersketch (I wouldn't call it an underdrawing) in graphite, put a layer of retouch over that, then went over my undersketch with a thin black felt-tip. After the felt-tip I put another layer of retouch on and then started painting. Even better ... I'm using an old bottle of Liquin through out the piece, even for the retouch layers, and I'm completely ignoring the fat-over-lean rule all the way thru. After it's finished, I will quickly put on multiple heavy coats of Damar varnish before it's dry.

The way I figure it ... I've broken just about all the rules with this one so it'll be a helluvan experiment.



Minh

[Zarathustra]

lol. Snakum, what's a few rules hey.
I've done a few paintings that break the rules - I look at it as experience, and if they don't last, the experience at least will.

If only the laws of physics did not apply to oil painting.

[Marc Sabatella]

When I painted using mineral spirits, I didn't "draw" at all - that is, no outlines of objects. I simply blocked in the objects themselves with burnt sienna paint thinned to various different values. I'd use a rag where necesssary to enlarge a light shape if an edge had been blocked in at the wrong place, or just go in with more darker paint if I needed to enlarge a dark shape in the same way. If I wanted, I could get pretty detailed, and have a full value sketch of the scene, although I didn't usually take it very far before going in to color.

When I switched to using MGraham paints and no mineral spirits, washes were no longer an option. So now I've been drawing using my biggest brush and burnt sienna paint. Again, just the basic shapes, nothing too detailed, then I get on with the "real" painting.

[WFMartin]

Well,

I usually sketch my original on a sketch pad of nearly any size. Once I get it the way I want it, I grid it out in the proportion of the final size, using a divider.

Using the grid idea, I then select a sheet of tracing paper, or tape a few together to make it the final canvas size. I then rule the tracing paper with my grid (this time in inches--the canvas size), and copy each section of the image, square by square. I do this in what you'd likely term a "cartoon" image, using very little shading and shape, even though the original sketch may have been quite detailed in that respect.

Hinge the completed image to the top of your canvas with tape, and slide a sheet of transfer paper, pigment side down, between your tracing paper and the canvas. Using a ballpoint, go over each line of your tracing paper sketch, thereby transferring the image to the canvas.

I have no idea what pigment is on the business side of "transfer paper", but I've been using it for years successfully. I used regular ol' graphite pencil to sketch on canvas long before anyone told me it was liable to bleed through, and after nearly 20 years, nothing has yet bled through. Sounds like an urban myth, to me, although I've had other artists say that it does.

I use this technique for everything but portraits. With my new approach to portraits, I use no preliminary sketch, whatsoever.

It works for me.

Bill

[Sketcher]

Originally posted by HRobinson
Hi Barbara. When I want loose I use pthalo blue + turp medium to the consistency of ink and an eggbert brush.

-Harry

Harry, what is an eggbert brush?

[Huygens]

I've been waiting for somebody to say "I use blue fade out pencils" but no one has, so I'll say it.

My teacher, Norm , was a well known commercial artist in Seattle before he moved to Tokyo and the way he taught me to transfer drawings to canvass or illustration board may reflect what was standard (at that time) in commercial art.

First transfer paper was made. This is heavy vellum (120 gram or better) that has been covered with blue fade out pencils (the type that don't show up on photos) and then the blue dissolved with solvent--zippo lighter fluid was a favorite-- and then carefully moved around on the vellum with a hogs bristle brush until the vellum was smoothly coated.

The drawing for the painting was then done on vellum (maybe this is an Americanism--by this I mean very heavy tracing paper). The home made transfer paper was laid on the canvas, and the vellum laid over that and the lines on the drawing traced over onto the canvas. However, the lines went on the canvas as blue lines of blue fade out, as the transfer paper acted like carbon paper.

Although you may not think that drawing over the lines in a drawing is very accurate, it is to a surprising degree.

Because the medium of colored pencils is a type of more or less chemically inert wax, it does not bleed through either oils or acrylics. Also I think blue fade out is made to mix chemically with other media, because it is made to be drawn over.

My two cents worth.

Huygens

[Wes Hyde]

Sketcher, an egbert is a long bristle brush that is very effective for loose strokes on the canvas.

This is an egbert:

[HRobinson]

You would just know that Wes' brushes look like that. To describe what a egbert brush is: it looks like a filbert on the end but it's about 5-6 times the length.

It's important to consider thalo blue in your sketch too. It really helps when you bring hard lines together as it'll show itself. Can you get the egbert's down under?

-Harry

[snakum]

Speaking of brushes ...

Never underestimate the usefulness of the 'Philbert'. The Philbert is a Robert Simmons filbert that has been worn down to just a bit longer than brights.

Phil Minh Thong Holbrook
Inventer of the Philbert Brush