Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Cleo. I'm a painter, author, illustrator, and I'm going to show you some tracing paper tricks to take your pencil sketching to the next level. Throughout this class, I'll teach you to use the glass on your iPad as a lightbox for tracing images and how to transfer the images to a sketchbook. This technique saves you a lot of time redrawing when something needs to be resized or moved. I've been making a living with a paintbrush since I got out of art school and I've used tracing paper to plan oil paintings for gallery shows, large commercial murals, licensed illustrations on products from calendars to greeting cards to T sets. I've illustrated books for other authors, and most recently I've written and illustrated my own books. Throughout this class, I'll teach you to use the glass on your iPad as a lightbox for tracing images, and how to transfer those images to a sketchbook. For example, here's how I use tracing in my own art. I drew these flowers to show three different styles of gouache, so I traced the first one and then I transferred it two more times. Tracing paper makes you a much more efficient illustrator, and at the same time you get the creativity of crafting by hand. For our class project, I'm going to teach you to trace images and lettering on an iPad or phone, then transform to a sketchbook to make an illustrated heading. I did this one about paint water, you can do one like mine or choose your own topic. A nice illustrated heading in a sketchbook encourages a daily art practice. You don't really need to know how to draw to trace, so this class is great for beginners. I'm still using these techniques everyday, so it's also great for established artists and designers. You should be familiar with some basic functions of your iPad or phone, like turning up the brightness, taking a screenshot and making something your wallpaper. Tracing is a very retro technique. Some of the ways that we manipulate images are going to sound familiar from photo editing apps like resize, flip, transform, duplicate, and mirror. But we're going to do it the old school way, on a piece of glass with a light underneath it. But since we have new technology, we get to use this piece of glass with a light underneath it because it has all the images already inside of it. Start thinking the mid-century way, pretend you are a pocket protector, with a repeater graph pen, bunch of mechanical pencils, and an exact dough knife in it. We're going to pretend we're using this when we're actually using this.
2. Class Project: For our class project, we'll take four different images and some lettering, and we'll combine them together for an illustrated sketchbook page or a poster. You can do a paint water poster like mine, or you can choose a theme you already like to draw. Start with four simple objects and a short heading. After each lesson, take a minute to practice each technique with a little sketch, and then we'll put them all together and combine them into a design at the end. Here's how I came up with my idea. You start with a little spark of interest. I had some pretty paint water leftover after a few painting sessions, so I sketched it before I threw it out. Then, I kept collecting samples of pretty colors. On the next page, I started keeping track of the date and the subject I was painting, which became a nice diary and was motivating like a star chart. For this project, I'm building on that chart, but adding a heading that is a bit of a joke about accidentally dipping your paintbrush in coffee, or sipping your paint water. Because the cups on your desk often look the same. You could draw your lunch, or your favorite art supplies. Here's a simple idea I did for Inktober. Every day I draw a different bottle of ink using the ink inside the bottle. Start simple and small. Then you can build on it with your next page. We'll work on a different item for our posts on each lesson. Also do some extra credit tracings of random objects to polish your skills. When we start arranging all the little scraps, they can feel like trying to sort a pile of feathers, and there's always one or two that need to be redone. Actually, the feathers would be a great theme for a page. In the next lesson, we're going to gather some supplies. You don't need any special apps on your iPad or phone. All we do is take pictures. Although, if you want, you can edit your photos before you trace them. Start looking around for shiny objects that spark your imagination. I'll see you in the next lesson.
3. Supplies: The supplies for this class are pretty simple. You'll need your iPad or phone, tape, scissors, tracing paper, a couple of pencils, and of course your sketchbook. If your messy like I am, you might want to also have an eraser and a dusting brush. Otherwise the supplies are pretty basic. The tracing paper I recommend is just get the clearest one you can find. Hands-on is a good brand. The CRL transfer paper comes in a roll, it's not necessary. I'm going to show you how to make your own transfer paper, but if you end up doing this a lot it's nice to have. You want some tape that's not so sticky that it's going to tear the paper. So you could a use a Blue tape, a Drafting tape, Scotch tape, the Magic kind or Washi tape, a couple of pencils, a hard one, this is a 2H. You could substitute that for a ballpoint pen if you need to for transferring. Then a nice pencil that's softer that you'd like to sketch with. You can get a little notebook like this one. It's a mole skin about the size of my phone. In the back of it, you put a piece of tracing paper that has some tape already on it. Since this is Drafting tape or you could use Washi tape, it'll remove without tearing the paper. Cut a little stack of tracing paper the size of your phone. I also have a little piece of transfer paper. This is [inaudible] that I've already bought, but you can make your own. This all fits right in this pocket. It's a special extra bonus points. This is a piece of watercolor paper, and on it I put some real thick Guash. Or you could also use water-colored paint that comes out of the tube. You squeeze it on there, and then you can re-wet that just with a little brush and some water, that fits in the pocket too. You've got your kit, you've got your brush, you've got your pencil, you've got your phone, everything you need to make some art on the go wherever you are, no excuses. We'll start drawing in the next lesson. Pencils ready.
4. Basic Tracing: Let's start by taking picture of your first object, mine is a coffee cup, because when it comes to paint water is often disguised as coffee. Start by turning the brightness all the way up on your iPad or phone. I've got a clipboard and just a piece of brown paper. I have some contrast between the white cup and the background. All I really have to do is just take a picture of the cup, then I can trace it off the screen. To make things easier for myself, I might as well take the picture of the same size that I want to draw the picture. For example, I've just measured on my pencil that I want my picture to be about this big. I can just walk backwards until I get the cup to be about the right size that I wanted and then take the picture. I have the picture of my coffee cup and it's about the right size that I want it. I took a piece of this case drafting tape and put it on a piece of tracing paper that I've cut too about the right size. Now at this point, I only get to touch the borders of the iPad, I don't get to touch the picture at all because it moves around a lot. The tape is on the top border and I'm just going to attach it only touching the white part, and I can put my fingers over here to support the paper anywhere I want. Now, the pencil does nothing, my finger does. A long pencil helps, and I'm just not going to touch it while I trace. Takes a little bit of practice at first, but you'll get used to it. Ultimately do your own drawing. You're not copying, you're just getting size placement at proportions, all that. Perfect. That's all you need. You can take it off. Here's a tip. If you want to draw a picture that's bigger than your phone screen, say that big. You can do it in two pieces. So I'm taping a piece of tracing paper right on there, and then trace it, and then take the tracing paper off. Move the image to where it lines up, tape it back down, and continue tracing, make sure everything matches up. The reason this worked is because I didn't pinch the picture at all. I just moved it straight up and down. Now you have a picture bigger than your screen. Another tip is to make sure you cut your tracing paper so it fits on your screen. If it wraps around like this, it doesn't lay flat enough and it gets in the way, and now you have this tracing. How are you going to get it onto your sketchbook? There's a few different ways. The first way is if you have a drawing that simple enough like this, I put down a piece of scrap paper underneath it and I write the word top on it. I do this because it gets pretty confusing which side you're graphite on. Right now I know the graphite on this side of the paper. If I turn it over and I just draw back over my tracing lines, now I know the graphite on the back of the paper also. If I want to transfer this cup, I just use the same tape, put it down. At this point I'm switching to my harder pencil, I have a 2H. I could also use a ballpoint pen, but if I use a ballpoint pen, I won't be able to flip it back and forth as much, because if I want to have a backwards cup, I'm going to have pen on one side of it, trace back over the lines, and I do one line and then I peek to see if it's working. Keep the tape down. It's working, so I just finish the lines. Peek before you take it off. That looks pretty good. There you go. Basic tracing and transferring. If I want this flipped, now my word top is backwards, and I know that I originally drew on the part that said tops, so I know there's graphite on that side of the paper. Put in a place wherever you want it, I'll do it here. Tape it down. That's pretty important because you don't want to move it around when you peek, use your hard pencil, trace over the lines. Peek. Looks good. That's flip and duplicate. Obviously, if you wanted to rotate one, you could put them anywhere you want. This is how you would make a repeat pattern. Let's scattered. When you start getting into more complex images, it's good to use a piece of transfer paper. You can make your own transfer paper, just by getting a piece of tracing paper, using the edge of your soft pencil and drawing all over it. This is the side the graphite is on. The tracing paper side. You can write top on it if you want, but it's not necessary, usually you can tell because it's shiny. Slip this underneath. This is taped down and you can see where it is. If I start tracing and I go off the edge, I know that I need to move this over a little bit. The transfer paper doesn't have to be as big as your whole drawing. I'll start here, I'll do a few lines and then I'll peek. The transferring so I can keep going, and as I draw around the mug, I'm going to move the transfer paper so I can fill every area. There it is. Now, alternatively, you can buy a Saral's transfer paper. Same thing, just already has the graphite on it. It's a Saral's transfer paper, same thing. Tape it down first, put that underneath, draw over it. I forgot a line. It's always good to peek before you lift the tape. Here you go, once you have your tracing, then you can refer back to your photograph and sketch in what you see. We learned how to take a picture of the right size that we want to use it as our drawing, we traced it, we learned how to flip it, duplicate it, rotate it, and three different ways of transferring it. One was drawing on the back of it, one was making our own transfer paper, and one was using some pre-made transfer paper. Take a moment to practice this. Do some samples and post them to the project to gallery. I'd love to see them. Next, we're going to start designing our page layout for our illustrated heading and putting this all together.
5. Plan Page Layout: Now we can start designing the layout of your page. It's great to have a pile of trace images that we can move around until we get it just right. Let's look at your layout possibilities. You could do a header like mine, or you could do a footer. You could do some a sidebar, or you could do a grid with a square where you can practice doing a different tracing every day. The whole point of making these tracings ahead of time is that you can really experiment with your page layout. Feel free to get goofy and use all your tracing paper tricks. I get everything sized on tracing at the beginning before I transfer it. This is the efficiency I'm talking about. Tracing isn't copying, it's a tool that helps you visualize and get it just right before you start your drawing. Make your tracing the right size like we did in lesson one. The first object is traced and we have an idea about our layout. Next step, we can start manipulating the images and resizing.
6. Resize: When things are starting to come together in the design process, it's very common to have to resize something, and it takes a lot of effort to have to erase it and redraw it. This is how I do it on the iPad. Often I start randomly sketching something that catches my eye while I'm doing it, I'm at that perfect state of busy hands, and idle mind. When your hands are busy crafting something, so your mind is free to wander. Now I have a good idea to do an illustrated heading with my coffee cup sketch, but it's on the wrong page and the wrong size. I could redraw it from life, but I would have to get all the proportions and ellipses right again. Illustrators always want to be efficient with their time working on commission. I'm going to trace and resize my own drawing. Here's my layout I've started and here's the size that I just want my cup to be. My photo is a little too big. As we learned in lesson one, I could have taken the photo the right size, but for the sake of learning to resize, let's just say I got this off the internet or it's an old photo. There's a lot of ways you can reduce this. My habit is I tend to just squeeze it down and get it the right size. Take a screenshot. This thing pops up, and I do nothing, and I save to photos. Now I have a photo that's a screenshot that's the size that I wanted, got a bunch of stuff in the background, but I don't care. You could also do this in photo editing apps, some social media apps resize for you. Just experiment and find your favorite way to do it. The screenshot way is working well for me. To trace this, I cut a piece of tracing paper that I can touch on the edge here. I could have gotten much smaller one that was just big enough to cover the image I want to trace, but I'd like to be able to hold it down on the edge, just trace it, and I have my first two images. If your image starts out too small, you can just zoom in like this. At this point sometimes it wobbles around too much to trace. I've gotten kind of used to it. I usually just go for it, but, you can also take a screenshot of it once you've got it the right size. When you're starting out tracing on the iPad, if you're having a hard time with the image moving around too much, you can always just make it your wallpaper. I have a page at the end of all of my apps that just has one in it. I have a nice empty screen. I can always use that if things are too hard, sometimes when you're pinching them down, they move too much. Now I have two images from my illustrated heading. Next step, we're going to distort an image. What if your image is too short, too tall, too wide, too skinny? How can we change the proportions? Practice resizing an image of your second object or even just the things on your walls and post them to the project gallery.
7. Combine / Distort: Sometimes you want to use your artistic license and transform or distort an image. Here's how to manipulate an image to make it look realistic and a little goofy. Now, I've two photos I'd like to combine into one. I've got the jar with the lid and the jar without the lid. They're also not in the right proportion. I'd like it to be taller, a narrower, something I might want to drink out of. Since I wanted to start the height, I'm going to start by making it the width that I want it, by doing the pinch and screenshot technique. That looks about right, I've got the width, I'm going to just go ahead and trace it this way. Now that I've got the jar about the right size that I want it, I'm going to make the lid fit on top. This can be a little bit finicky. So just carefully move it around where you think is going to look pretty good and screenshot. I think I want that to be floating on top. So I'm going to put it right there. So you have two options here. You can move the tracing paper around over the image and trace it where you want it, or you can trace two different pieces of paper and tape them together. So here we go. In this drawing, I combined two different items just by moving a single piece of tracing paper over two different images. You can also trace on two different pieces of tracing paper and combine them just by taping the two pieces of tracing paper together. I could also switch the lid out for a little landscape. The ways that you can combine images are really endless. My cup is still shorter than I want it. I think I want it to grow right here. This matters where you decide to grow it. I think I want it to be about that tall. So just fill in the lines. It's pretty simple to make the jar taller, but depending on where and how you cut things, it can make a difference, and it can be pretty silly. Long necks, short legs, or just giant arms. Let's talk about where you're getting your reference photos from and how not to rip off your fellow artist. Inside your iPad is Google image search and all the pictures, but most of them are copyrighted. What you're looking for are very basic photographs that the photographer won't recognize as their own. Don't use other people's drawings. Take several images and put them together and give them a style of your own. Practice manipulating some images. It could be your next item for your heading or it could be something crazy. Let's see it in the project gallery.
8. Symmetry: Sometimes you can't get a good photo and you have to straighten it up on your own. Or sometimes you want to draw a coffee cup that has two handles like a trophy, but your coffee cup only has one. Here's how to straighten it up on your own. I have three items and the last one I want to put in is my paint solid bucket. I've been using this for years. It's pretty encrusted, but I'm an illustrator so I can fix it up and make it look really nice and clean. Sometimes the only photo you can get is crooked, I want this to be a nice, symmetrical, straight view. I'll start by tracing it, put that there. I'm going to start by folding it in half and trying to find the center line. I know that I like this half of the best because I want to be able to see where that attaches. That looks about right. I can see that things are pretty off. That's the center line and I put another piece of tracing paper on top of it and retrace it again, but only the half that I like. Now I purposely didn't draw the coiled wire at the top or the clasp. Now, all I have to do is flip this and draw the other half. I'm going to put a piece of scratch paper underneath of it because this now has graphite on it and anything that I press down on, its going to come off and transfer. Okay. That's looking pretty symmetrical. All I have to do is just smooth out where these meet. Now I want to put the clasp on. This is the top and because of the way I folded it, I've got graphite on the top on both sides. I'm going to put on the clasp just where I want it. I'm going to put it in the middle at this point. I'm going to just have to fake it. Good enough. Now, the reason I didn't put the coil on is because I want to do that kind of a gestural mark. You can see how the first one was a little bit crooked. It looks like a trace photograph. The second one is more symmetrical, looks more deliberate. It's starting to come together. I have all my paint water containers finished. In the next lesson, we'll do lettering, but first practice a little, find an image that's a little wonky. Trace it, fold it in half and make it symmetrical, post it in the project gallery.
9. Lettering: The way to learn lettering is copying and practice. Tracing fits right in with that process. How many times you start lettering a poster and you get to the end and you run out of room. Well, here's a tracing paper trick for that, type, like photography is also copyrighted. Some artists spend a really long time sculpting each letter. The ethical and don't rip off your fellow artist use a basic looking lettering is reference, not recognizably stylized. You can always distort it the way we did in the last lesson. You can photograph vintage signs, something old, that's out of copyright. There are some free font websites you can go to and type in a word to see a preview, then screenshot it or you can just buy a font but use it as a starting point and add your own signature handwriting to it. We're getting closer. Now I just need the lettering on top. I typed my lettering into a Google doc and took a screenshot. I couldn't get my letters as big as I wanted them. I measured that I want to about this big. I'm going to just enlarge them myself this way. Now you could take a screenshot and trace from that or you could make it your wallpaper if it was moving around too much. Tracing lettering is about the same as tracing a picture. My original sketch, my type is on a path, so I'm going to just put a larger piece of tracing paper over that. Just mark out about how big I wanted that. An arc, doesn't fill the whole page, this might get a little fiddle, so I prepared a bunch of pieces of masking tape and stuck them to the edge of my notebook an easy reach. This is the arc where I want to place my lettering. I want to make sure it's even, I can just fold it in half and see if it matches up. That looks pretty good. Here's the size of the letters that I want to put on that path, here we go, this is old school, this is how people used to have to do it when they were doing paste up. Cut it nice and then, and to put it on the arc, you're going to cut in-between all the letters, but don't go all the way through and leave just a tiny button. They are going to start to fan out. You can go into angle if you have to, do it on both of them. This one is going to curve this way on the line. If I wanted to do a little roller coaster, I would cut this one and leave connections at the top, so it could bend up, but I want them both to do this rainbow. If you cut all the way through, you can always tape it. I'm going to tape this down and just going to eyeball it how much room I have here. I want to have a nice space in the middle, so wrap them around a little bit like that. Feels a little bit like using the type on a path tool and illustrator and start taping him down. It's going to be a little bit wiggly, a little hard to deal with, that's okay because when we trace it, we're going to have it on this new sheet of paper underneath, I don't have to worry about that. I'm going to slip this piece of surveilled transfer paper under here and use my hard pencil. You can make your own tracing paper if you don't have this and it's okay to draw right over the tape that you used to tape it down. Peel it off. Once you've checked to see that you've got all your spots, there you go. Let's see what it's going to look like in my notebook. I think it's going to fit. Now I could have done it right on the paper, but I did it on the tracing paper so I could have the opportunity to move it around. Just means I have to draw everything one extra time but that's part of your process. This tracing ended up pretty light, so I'm going to just draw over them quickly so I can see where I am when I'm doing my layout. When you do this type of sketching and layout by hand, you're going to feel like it's a really repetitive process but that's actually a good thing. When your hands are busy doing something in your mind doesn't really have to think about it and make decisions constantly. Then it starts to wander. Says busy hands, idle mind. This is the sweet spot where you want to be. That's when you get the best ideas, like walking the dog. You're keeping your hands busy and allowing the good ideas just to come in. But while you're working on something of that specific project. Practice making some lettering the right size to fit your illustrated heading and also practice making some lettering that sneaks around or smiles or frowns or maybe it's a rainbow and upload it to the project gallery. Let me see it.
10. Conclusion: We made it to the end. I hope that like me, you have a big pile of tracings to use in your future sketches and crumpled up papers all over the floor. Because in art, you always have to go through the messy stage to get to the good stuff. Now, you can draw anything you can take a picture of and edit it to fit like a puzzle with your other drawings in an illustrated heading. I hope you have many more planned out sketchbook pages to come and I can't wait to see them in the project gallery. That's it, times up pencils down.
Cleo Papanikolas, Painter/Author/Illustrator
