In a previous tutorial with Anne-Marie, I was told about Tracedown – which is a form of carbon paper for artists. I have to admit that I was sceptical about it – partly from my own sense of internal ‘snobbery’, I suppose. But I laid that to one side and tried it, and it has hugely sped up the drawing process for me.
There is a definite process to drawing using Tracedown, starting with the printing of the image I want to draw. As I want the drawings to be life-sized, I have had to first edit them in photoshop, so that they print such. Because the plants I am currently focussing on are Herbarium specimens, they (very usefully) all have a ruler photographed next to them, which provides me with an accurate measurement I can then use to scale the image up. So far, I have only drawn plants which I am able to print out at 100% scale on A4 paper (as this is the size of the printer I have at home, and I haven’t had a chance to print the A3 versions yet), however, the process works exactly the same on A4 as it does on A3. The image below shows the first stage of the actual tracing – I use masking tape to lightly attach the paper to the board, then place the Tracedown on top of that, and lightly secure that with masking tape also. Finally, I lay the image I want to trace on top of that, and secure that to the Tracedown, so that it wouldn’t move whilst I was tracing it.
In order to trace the image, I used a biro, as this was hard enough to provide clean lines, while also allowing me to see where I have traced and where I haven’t. The good thing about using Tracedown, is that it is “wax free”, which means that you are able to erase any places where you have made a mistake, or you have leant on the paper and smudge marks have appeared, just as you would with normal graphite. This also means that, should it still be visible after the drawing is complete, the tracing can be erased, leaving only the inked lines. Below is an image of what the final result of using Tracedown is:
Overall, I am extremely pleased with how the Tracedown works for me and the series – it has sped up my drawing exponentially, and has vastly increased my chances of completing around forty drawings by the time hand in comes around in June. The level of accuracy isn’t perhaps quite what it was when I was drawing by hand, as the lines can be fainter, as well as slightly ‘fatter’. The paper can still move whilst drawing, which leads to some slightly misplaced elements. However, even when I was drawing by hand, I made many mistakes and the drawing wasn’t 100% true to the actual image of the plant. When using Tracedown, I am able to achieve accurate scale and generally accurate placement as well, which means that generally, I think the drawings look more true to the image than before.
