Tuesday, May 22, 2012

I finished something!

I'm feeling a bit 'stuck' craft-wise, so it was great to finish my Vogue artwork last night.  Here it is:


Hmm.  Slightly twisted on the page, but I can fix that up when I frame it.

I used two layers of tracing paper - the top layer has most of the drawing, plus a small amount of colour:


The layer underneath has most of the block colour, and some of the writing which I wanted to tone-down the colour of.

I used a mixture of ink (the black), coloured pencil and coloured card stuck down with double sided tape.

Inspired?  Want to make one?  It's really simple, so if you're planning to do something similar I'd recommend choosing a simple line drawing, and making a few copies of it at the size that you're after.

Your first step is to trace the line drawing - primary school stuff right?!  

And now some planning:
  • If you're planning to use a texta for the line drawing, do a trial to make sure that it won't smudge! I had planned to use a marker for the red highlights, but found that the one I had on hand was going to smudge and switched to pencil instead. 
  • You'll need to think about how you adhere the layers together.  I learnt from my son's Big Ben poster that double sided tape doesn't look that good stuck on the reverse side of tracing paper.  So, rather than stick the blocks of colour to the back of the first layer of tracing paper (which is what we did with the Big Ben poster), I stuck mine onto a second layer of tracing paper.  This way I could use my tape where it wouldn't be seen (I plan to join all of the layers together at the edges under a framing mat before hanging it on the wall).
  • Check out what your planned colours look like underneath the tracing paper.  The red I used is a lot more orange than I originally intended, but it looks heaps better (and less orange) under the tracing paper than my first preference.  On a similar vein, I used a coloured tracing paper for the girls' blonde hair, but the adhesive 'Jac' paper I used to stick it down altered this to a solid colour, which was a bit disappointing at first.
  • I used two layers of tracing paper, and would highly recommend it as opposed to attaching your coloured shapes to a solid background.  Using the second layer of tracing paper allows you to stick down your coloured card without having double-sided tape showing from the front, and allows you to line up all of the layers more easily than if you only have one layer above the solid background.
Your next step will be to cut the blocks of colour from coloured card/paper.  To do this accurately, place a copy of the picture over the top of your coloured card and then cut around the shape you're after (this is why you'll need a few copies of the picture).

I'd recommend cutting two layers of paper together where you have intersecting colours. For example, to do the socks and shoes I:
  • Layered black/red and white card on top of each other, then put a copy of the picture over the top of the lot, 
  • Cut the whole stack around the outline of the sock and shoes together (you have to be careful none of the layers move).  
  • Removed the white/sock card, and cut the picture and the black/red card around the shoe outline. 
This way there is no gap between the sock and the shoe and there's no little bit of sock showing where the sock and shoe aren't cut exactly the same (hope that makes sense, I found it impossible to take photos while I was cutting!).  You might be able to see that I didn't use this approach for the intersection between the little girl's hair and the middle girl's dress, and there's a bit of a gap there.  Minor gaps are less visible once you put the line drawing over the top, but I know that if I think about it too much this bit of the picture will bug me!

I couldn't find any polka-dot paper, so I used
coloured pencil on the trace to make my own.
Finally, you can fill in some details with coloured pencil - I used pencil for the middle girl's shoes, the lighter sections on their toy (no idea what sort of animal it's supposed to be), the detailing on the smaller girls' dresses, the middle girl's headband, and the word 'pattern'.

Oh, and if you don't want to have to deal with it later, make sure that your drawing is square under the tracing paper before you begin!

Thanks for sticking with me all the way to the bottom!  If you do decide to make a tracing paper artwork I'd love to see how it turns out - leave me a comment with your link.

2 comments:

  1. Wow! That's really cute and it sounds very complex and accurate to execute so well done.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That is so gorgeous! What a great idea. You've been so thorough in your execution... lovely.

    ReplyDelete

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