Transcripts
1. Introduction: While it's true, you
need a good sketch as the foundation of a painting, there are absolutely no rules to say how you should
get said sketch done. Hi, I'm Nadine. I'm
a watercolor artist from Melbourne, Australia. And today, I want to do
a really quick demo of just a few ways you can transfer an image to your
watercolor paper. Although I normally
freehand sketch, there are some times when I can't get it right
and I can feel myself getting crankier and more tense trying to sort out
the drawing when really, all I want to do is paint. So today, I want to
tell you to give yourself permission to
do whatever works for you to get into painting without having to worry about
how well you can draw. It's about the paint,
not the pencil.
2. Materials: The materials that you're going
to need today will depend on which method you design to
use to transfer your image. For all of them, you are going
to need a reference photo. You can use your own reference
photo or you can use the one that I uploaded
to the Skillshare site. You're welcome to
use that. You need a bunch of paper obviously
to transfer onto. Now, as I'm demonstrating I'm just using printing
paper because I didn't want to waste my watercolor
paper except when I get to the little demo about
using a light box and then I actually have used
some 300 gram arches, watercolor, cold
press paper for that. Now for the freehand sketch, you just need a pencil
and an eraser for that. If you want to do a grid, you're also going to need
a ruler for that one. To do the tracing, I always just use as cheap as I can get tracing
paper for that, or you might want to use
some transfer paper, some carbon paper for that. I don't do that very often. Then the only other
thing that I'm going to show you is using a light box. Now, if you already
have a light box, you're not going to need
to be shown how to use it, but I will show you how
I use this guy and you can decide whether you
think it's worth getting. I don't really think
we need anything else, really, really quick, we'll just go through and I'll show you a few things
that you can do.
3. Freehand and Grids: Okay. You know that I'm
going to say straight up that sketching free hand is the best way if you can bring yourself to
do it just because it gives you practice drawing. The more you sketch, the better you'll get, the
easier it will be. But as I say, sometimes you don't have the energy for that, sometimes it just doesn't work. I would also say that it's
easier to sketch from a photo, a printed out photo than it is, if you're looking at
something in real life. It's quite different sketching things that are in three D, that maybe there's
some movement, that is a lot harder than
just sketching from a photo. We're already a step
ahead if I've got a printout of what I want
to, what I want to sketch. Now, if you're going
to sketch freehand, which is what I do
most of the time, only a couple of
things to remember. I would probably
sketch not flat. I'm flat at the moment,
but your perspective will be skewed when
you're drawing flat. So I would tend to have my image upright and have my board
tilted up a little bit as well. I just use a regular HB
pencil and a normal eraser. Just keep your marks, your initial marks,
keep them loose. Don't get really heavy when
you first get onto the page. You just want to find
where your lines best fit. It might take you a few goes
to get it on and think, actually, that's not quite
right, move them around. Just try and a little
bit loose as you're sketching and figuring out
the position of things. But this isn't what
it's about today. I want to show you how if you don't want to
have to sketch, you can get it onto your paper. Framing free hand,
the next best thing for something like this
is to draw up a grid. It doesn't matter what
size the grid is. You just have to make sure that whatever you do on the page here matches whatever you do on the page that you're
trying to copy it onto. Now I've got my gridded
picture, my gridded paper, so I can simply go and draw what's in each of
these little squares, which is less overwhelming than trying to sketch
the whole picture. So much simpler looking one square at a time
and also letting you measure how far down does
that come in my square? Maybe it comes down
slightly lower. You can use that
to really help you figure out where everything is. All right. It gives you a reasonable
transfer of the picture, but then you've got all these lines that
you have to deal with. I don't really like doing this. It's good for practicing your sketching and I
guess it's also good for thinking about looking it forces you to more look
at the negative shape. If for example, I'm up here, what I'm looking
when I want to draw that and I didn't get it right now that I actually
look at that there. But look at the negative space. Sometimes it's easier to do
that than it is to think, I've got these funny feathers
here, how do I handle that? Look at these shapes to help you get your eye and see
whether you've got it right. Close. No cigar. But that's sometimes helpful. This is not what I
do. I never do this. Maybe high school was the
last time I did that. So we will move on to
what I actually do. If I get really, really stuck, I would move to tracing and that's what I'll go through now.
4. Tracing : There are a few different
ways that you can trace and different
ways that will require your picture to be as
is or flipped and reverse. I'll show you a couple
of things you can do. First thing you can
do is you can use some carbon paper,
some transfer paper, which I think I never
really priced it, but I suspect it's probably
an expensive way of doing it. The idea here being that you get the paper that you
want to transfer onto. You get some transfer paper. Now, this one's actually white, this isn't going to do me
any good because I use this for a scratchbd project, which the background is black. Hence the tracing
paper is white. But you'll get the idea.
I've got my paper, the carbon paper, then
I put this on top. When I then come through
and draw on my image, the idea being
that that will hit the carbon paper
and it will make a mark on the page underneath. That's one way you
can do it. As I said, I've only really done that
for a scratchboard project where I had a black background. Another way you
can do it is using just regular tracing paper.
That's what I would do. The only caveat there is to
do that to use tracing paper, your image, if I
want my image to come out this way,
I need to flip it. So what I would do is I would on my computer
flip an image, reverse it, print it off, and then come and sketch. Oh, that's not my
regular HB pencil. Come and sketch onto
the tracing paper. And I do I probably
should sharpen my pencil. Um, I'm being very quick here, but you do want a
fair bit of lead on. If you do a really light line, when you actually
transfer the image, it will be really hard to see. Give yourself a decent
amount of lead. The other thing, if
you've got an image where you can't
quite see through. So here, this is quite light. If I was having
trouble seeing it, I would go to the
original picture and just make those
bits a little bit darker so that I can
actually now more clearly see where I'm actually going. A I've just been
freehand sketching. I've actually been really
rough with this sketch. Really, if I was
tracing this properly, I would be a lot
more careful with my copying of the lines there to make it
easier for myself. So this one, see, I really
can't see that shoulder. So I would come and pop that
in so that now it's really clear and put that down. And even when you even when I have the
ability now to trace, I could put every detail
that I wanted in. I wouldn't do that
because I want my painting to be loose just
because that's my style. I don't want to put all of
these say feathers in here. What I might do is
every now and then, it can be useful
to give yourself. I've got this yellow patch
here so I can give myself a really light indication of where that's going
to be on the image, or maybe I want to know
where that shadow is. All the direction some of
these feathers so that I keep my eye when I'm painting it to pay
attention to those details. But I do want to sketch the trace to still
to be pretty loose. I got the bottom of his beak in. Okay. So then all I need to
do is get my piece of paper. Turn it over. Now, I cannot
tell you the number of times. I've traced a piece, gone and done
something, come back, put it down and started
to go on the top and realize that I haven't
turned my tracing paper over, so make sure you turn
your tracing paper over. And then all it requires is making sure if you think
it's going to move, you can tape it down,
but keep a steady hand. Then again, like we did in probably primary
school for this, just go around and really a lot of pressure on there to get
those pencil lines on. Now, before I've gone, I think I've gone and
gone over all my lines, but before you let this move, make sure you hold it
and look at the image before you rip this off because sometimes you'll
have a look and think, Oh, actually I missed I've missed a bit,
I need to go back. Back over that. Also, be careful.
This pretty mucky, so try and make sure you don't spread too much
graphite everywhere. The same kind of goes
for the carbon paper, that can get pretty mucky,
the transfer paper as well. You can make a mess
fairly easily. I've got all these
little bits of lead, be conscious of that. But if I take that away,
then I've got my image transferred the way that I
want it to be transferred. Now if you don't
have tracing paper, at a at a pinch, you can get away with maybe even baking
paper from the kitchen. I've done that
before, not ideal, but if you're really
struggling, you can do that. Also, I I come on just
straight onto the image. Again, this is my reverse image and pop I I'm heavy
enough with the lead, sometimes you can get away with turning over and
doing it this way. You can see that
will come out. Or if you don't have the image printed out reverse
and for some reason, you can't do that,
you can also on the back of your printed out
image, do the same thing. This is harder because depending on how
heavy the print is, you might be able to see,
but that will also let you that's confusing because I've got lead on
the front as well. But it's a lead on
the back. That should also be transferring through. If you don't have
the tracing paper, you can get around it. The last one I want to show
you is using a light box.
5. Using a Lightbox: So the last thing
I'm going to show you is using a light box. Now, you can also
use a projector. Projectors are pretty expensive, so I certainly don't have one, but I think there are lots
of apps and things on your phone that you can use
to do this kind of thing. I find the light box
is really simple. I bought this because they're
pretty reasonably priced. You can pick up no fuss, pretty cheap light boxes. And the reason I got
this one was I would go to give a workshop. About painting,
not about drawing, it would be a painting workshop. I find that I'd have a
bunch of students that could really quickly,
easily freehand sketch, and then I have a bunch
of other students that were painting
because they weren't confident in their sketching
and they were taking ages to sketch up
before the class. I ended up that we spent a lot of time drawing
instead of painting. That's why I bought this and
it's actually really good. Now, this time, I
am going to use some watercolor paper to show
you because I want you to see that the thickness
of the paper isn't a problem until you get
to say six 40 grams. I paint mostly on
640 gram paper, but it's expensive
and it's really, really thick and I couldn't
use a light box for that. This is 300 gram paper
and that's fine. I've got my image and I've
got it the right way up. This is the way that I want
it to appear in my painting. I'll see if I can blind you. Switch my light box on. We see this 300 gram paper that's actually
got some pictures, paintings on it from
the last lesson I filmed, but you'll
get the idea. If I put that on the top, sure how well that's
going to project through. I can see the image through. I can now go straight onto
my paper and sketch that. Onto my page. Now, again, this is the same as
I've got that shoulder that in the last clip I was
saying was really light. Again, I can see it,
but it is quite hard. If that is too light, I can go onto my original, line that back up again. Now I can see that
more clearly because I put the pencil underneath. So this is a good way of getting on if you're using
300 gram or lighter paper, not so good if you're
using heavy stuff. Again, be really careful with
the weight of your pencil. You don't want to
get it too hard, particularly if you're
doing a subject like this one that's really lots
of whites and yellows. It's hard to get the
pencil off underneath. Sometimes I find
it's good to give yourself a mark so that if
you're taking it on and off, you know where to line your
paper back up to get back into the right spot without
having to really concentrate. Really cheap, really simple tool for transferring
onto your paper.
6. A Final Word: So this class is a little bit different in that
normally my classes are very project focused and
I'll be saying at the end, photo pop your painting up
on the project section. This one's a little
bit different. But I would recommend
that you go through and do a freehand
sketch first up, then do one or other
of the methods and produce a more
accurate representation of the photo and just compare the two and
you might find that your freehand sketch
and your trace sketch look identical and that's Great, or you might find that
actually you can see, it's easier to see differences, problems with your free hand sketch when you've got
a pencil sketch next to it versus looking at the
actual reference photo itself. For me, looking
from here to here, I can see the problems, but it's not as easy as
looking from here to here and I can see where my sketch has gone wrong here already. If you do that, if you want to put up a any photos of that, go ahead and do that. I'm always happy to give
feedback on sketches. But really, what I
want you to take out from this is that if you need to trace or use a light
box, it's completely fine. You don't have to be fantastic
at drawing to paint. That's not what this
is about. We want you nice and relaxed and happy. When you go to paint, I don't want you wound up and
stressed because you couldn't get the drawing quite right and trying to figure
out what went wrong. So be kind to yourself
and let yourself take the easier route to get ready to paint. Thanks for joining me.
Nadine Dudek, Professional Watercolour Artist
