anika mari

This is going to be the final post in what turned out to be a little series about the drawings I recently framed for my friend, Anita. In the process of preparing and framing the works for her new apartment, I had quite a few insights about my work. I discovered that some doodles I overlook completely can be the bees knees in someone else’s eyes. I also realized that if a sketch ain’t broke, there’s no need to fix it. However, sometimes the plan I have in mind for a drawing, might be just the ticket.

And now that I’m finished talking in idioms, we can move on.

The final lesson I took from the experience was how to enlarge a drawing. Although the steps to get a bigger version of a small drawing didn’t stir any philosophical ponderings within me, it was an interesting process in and of itself.

After scanning in the original drawing in two parts (it was a small drawing, but bigger than my scanner bed), I lined up the two images in photoshop as closely as I could. I was surprised by how off the images were, even though I kept the paper as flat and square to the edge of the scanner as possible. No matter how I nudged or budged, the images just wouldn’t line up perfectly.

Then I remembered the scale to which I was enlarging it, and I realized that it wouldn’t really matter. I cropped the image to the appropriate size for my large paper, and then used a trick I learned in design school to import the image into InDesign so I could tile and print out the large size image on 8.5×11 sheets of paper. It was only a matter of cutting and taping the pages in the right order, and before I knew it i had a large, tiled version of my original drawing.

original drawing, 11×14in

tiled version, 20×30in

After I had the tiled, full size printout, I carefully attached sheets of graphite transfer paper to the back. Graphite transfer paper is similar to carbon paper, but since it’s graphite, you can erase any lines you don’t want in the final drawing.

back of tiled drawing, shows graphite paper, after tracing

After affixing the tiled printout to the final paper with removable tape, the most tedious part of the process began: tracing all the lines! After tracing and removing the tiled paper, I could clearly see all the outlines of the drawing in gray graphite. Then I had to trace all the lines again! this time with pen!

final outlines, 20×30in

I complain, but really it didn’t take all that long in the grand scheme of things, and once I had the outlines, the fun part started: adding the colors!

first red, then spanish orange was added

next up, mineral orange, followed by tulip yellow and cream

At this stage there was only mulberry and some line texture to add before the drawing was finished.

finished drawing, 20×30in

Looking at the detail you can get a good sense of the colors and line quality.

final 20×30in, detail

Positioning the original and enlarged version side by side was pretty awesome. I was happy with how well the image held up at the larger size. Because the paper was different, the markers (i used the very same colors on the small drawing) showed up more saturated, lending a bolder feel to the larger piece, which the size handles well.

final, 20×30in and original, 11×14in

What was more awesome still was seeing the final large drawing in the frame.

This is the first time I’ve enlarged one of my drawings, and it was really fun. I’ve been wanting to produce large, bold pieces of art lately, but because I’m more comfortable drawing on a smaller scale, that’s what I tend to do.

Small pieces of paper, or even a sketchbook are easy, accessible and don’t need a lot of space to work on. Plus, because I’ve done so much drawing at a small scale, my drawing hand is used to it! I’ve drawn on larger pieces of paper, but it never seems to have the same feel, and I never seem to be as satisfied with the outcome.

While I intend to keep practicing drawings directly on larger format paper, the process of enlarging smaller drawings may be a good way for me to draw within my comfort zone and still have a large drawing as the final product.

***

Just as a little side note, there were just a few other drawings that I framed for Anita that didn’t make it into my blog posts. If you are curious to see what rounds out the collection of drawings she chose, on flickr you can see: a sketch of a house plant in a pot, an interpretation of a tropical flowering tree, and three unlikely plants.

In my last post I wrote about my subconscious tendency to polish sketches to make them suitable as final drawings. Now I’m starting to realize that the sketchiness might be what is so endearing about certain drawings, but there are still cases where polishing is in order.

While I was in Saipan last summer, I worked mostly with watercolor. Often I would then go back and add ink drawing to the painting. In my entry about pods from about a year ago, you can see that after I had the watercolor painting done, I did a number of sketches to figure out what drawings to add to the pods.

Especially in the large image, above, you can see that this is truly a sketch. There is a lot of similarity of pattern among the different pods, and I even drew arrows so you could see the progression of thought of how the pattern evolved.

When my friend Anita chose these as one of the pieces she wanted framed, I liked the idea right away, but I wanted to redraw the pods so that there would be more variety in pattern.

I actually liked the arrangement of the pods of each drawing (a little off, but somehow perfect in their imperfection), so I loosely traced the pods from the 3 sketches, and then I had a lot of fun filling them in.

Obviously I copied some of the patterns I’d already created. As Anita said, “the elephant is a must!” It was fun, and sometimes a wee bit challenging to come up with new patterns to add, but in the end the effort was worth it. I think the drawings turned out really great. Although, I must admit, there’s part of me that wonders if someone out there thinks the sketches are better! Still, deep down, I know I found the best solution for this particular piece.

I framed it in a ready-made triptych frame from IKEA’s Ribba series.

I think it looks pretty dynamite, so I’m going to frame a set of these drawings for myself too!

Or does it?

…

Way back in the day when I took my very first 2D design class, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I just knew I liked art. Even through the process of the class, I didn’t really understand how the skills we were taught would be applicable in the real world, but I wasn’t concerned about that either. I wasn’t an algebra student who hated math who complained that learning equations was pointless. I loved art, and I loved the 2D design class for the shear fun of it. Later I would realize that it actually did have applications in the real world, or at least it would have before the age of computers. But I digress.

One of the first projects in the class was to come up with a “motif” that we would use throughout the rest of the semester as we made an accordion style book that incorporated all of the class projects we’d do into one cohesive piece. In this class a “motif” was small design in black and white. Years later, when I was studying graphic design, a big light bulb went off. Essentially when we designed our motif, we created something like logo, but not for a company. It was purely aesthetic.

I filled up pages of my sketchbook with possible motifs. I spent a lot of time carefully drawing many different designs. I also doodled mindlessly in the margins, as I still do today.

Imagine my surprise when I was presenting many, big, glorious potential motifs that I’d spent hours drawing, and my professor pointed to a small doodle that wasn’t more than a half an inch big and said, “this one.”

Mouth agape, I looked at her and said, “really? but I spent so much time on all these others which I really think are better.”

She was firm, “no, this one. Make it bigger and show me again.”

Okie dokes. So then I took my time drawing it bigger. I evened it out, made it symmetrical, and to my eye more visually pleasing. She took one look and said, “no, take this small drawing to a xerox machine and enlarge it to the proper size and then copy it.”

Mouth hanging open once again, I followed her instructions. Finally satisfied, my professor approved my drawing, and I had my motif for the class.

That was the very first time that someone found something interesting in my sketchbook that I wouldn’t have looked twice at. It happened again recently when my friend, Anita, made a surprising choice when choosing a few of my drawings to be framed for her new apartment.

Anita also chose a cactus drawing to be framed.

This case is a little different in that I can see why she chose it. I like the drawing too, quite a lot. That said, in my mind it always needed a little polishing.

So I polished.

I traced the original cactus, but I made the colors brighter and cleaned up the blemishes and smudges on the cactus. I also took away the clouds, which I felt detracted from the cactus itself. However, the feedback was that Anita liked it, but really missed the clouds.

So I redrew some clouds.

The clouds I added were more monochromatic in color with a more even pattern than the original clouds, and that seemed to be the right fit from my perspective.

The final feedback was then that Anita really liked it, but was still drawn to the original drawing. She liked the fact that the original cactus was a little more weather beaten; he looked like a survivor. In the end, I printed out the original sketch and framed it, and my friend was happy.

This whole process sparked an internal inquiry. I’m not sure there’s really an answer, but I just find it interesting that people are, at least sometimes, attracted to my work for reasons that are very different from what my vision for the piece is.

I definitely have a perfectionist streak in me. Often I like to think of it as perfect imperfection. For the most part I don’t mind if my drawings are a little off or a little sketchy, or if the patterns I draw aren’t perfectly symmetrical, but there is also a part of me that believes that what’s in my sketchbook is a different level of completeness to what a final drawing should be.

My brother, John, once flipped through one of my sketchbooks when we were having a conversation about how best to get some final drawings finished. As he flipped through, he pointed out several drawings, mentioning that they were already complete. He suggested that since they were on sketchbook paper, the best route would probably be scanning them in and getting some prints made. Besides that, they’d be ready to go right away. I agreed wholeheartedly–except for that little part of me inside that was critiquing each drawing, saying, “well, yeah, it’s complete. you just have to fix a couple of those lines and clean up the color a bit, so actually it’s almost complete.”

At this point I think I have to admit that this thought process goes one step beyond belief. My inner critic, or this sense of how a finished piece should be, is deeply ingrained in me. Most of the time I don’t even notice when the wheels are turning and laying out my plan of attack for finishing a drawing.

I’m starting to realize that maybe a finished drawing doesn’t always have to be so perfect and clean. Maybe the sketchiness gives it some character, or adds meaning to the piece that I might not see.

Who would have thought that the process of finishing and framing a few pieces of art for a friend would reveal something about myself that before was at least partially hidden?

Now that I’m aware of my tendencies, I can hopefully stay aware of them when that inner critic comes up again, and look at my art in a different way, or at least pause to consider a different approach to the finished product.

Whenever I let someone flip through my sketchbook, more often than not, I’m surprised by what grabs their attention. I draw all kinds of stuff when I sketch, from rough sketches to little doodles to more finished drawings. Some of my drawings are pretty, some are kind of ugly, some are surprising, and some turn out just plain weird. Sometimes I draw stuff that I think is unremarkable, and yet sometimes that’s what gets the remarks.

When my friend Anita recently wanted some of my art framed for her new apartment, I let her choose whatever she wanted. As she flipped through my sketchbook she singled out a page of doodles that surprised me because I think they are a little odd, though perhaps somewhat endearing.

I looked at it quizzically, and she surprised me even more by the particular part she liked the most. She pointed it out, and all I could ask was, “really?”

Without hesitation she replied, “yeah. I like it. I think it’s totally my style. Don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, I can see your point,” was my response.

I probed a little further, “you really want that framed?”

“Yes, absolutely!” she assured me.

After my raised eyebrows had relaxed, I went ahead and redrew the weird creature and plants to fix up the composition a bit. I moved the creature up a smidge from the plants to balance the spacing, and changed the line quality just a bit. I also added more stippling here and there and made the critter’s “beard” longer.

Anita also chose a companion drawing.

I’d say it’s a little less odd, but I’m pretty sure she loves it just as much, and I think they will look really nice hung together in her new place.

Skeptical though I was to begin, I was actually pleasantly surprised when all was said and done. I think both drawings look really sharp in the frame, and they will undoubtedly be interesting conversation pieces hanging in Anita’s new apartment.

I recently finished up four drawings for my sister-in-law. I started by doing sketches in my sketchbook and then drew the final drawings on bristol. When I started working on the final drawings, I noticed that my markers behaved very differently on the different paper.

The paper in my sketchbook is much more porous than the bristol that I worked with for the final drawings. The markers blend really nicely in my sketchbook, and the colors are quite a bit softer than they appear on the bristol. The main drawback of the sketchbook paper is that the color tends to bleed right across the black ink lines.

I did a drawing in my sketchbook of seaweed, and the markers bled across the lines significantly. You can see the bleeding clearly where the gray from the background bled into the leaves of the light green seaweed.

The bristol must not absorb as much of the ink, so more of the ink stays on the surface, making colors appear brighter. While it was actually really nice that the markers didn’t bleed across my inked lines, that meant the colors didn’t blend together either, but that might be a worthwhile trade off.

I thought it made a lot more sense to start doing sketches on bristol so that I could get a better idea of what to expect in terms of the final appearance, since most of my final drawings have been on bristol lately.

When I was at the art store, I found a little 6×6 inch pad of bristol paper for under $3. I bought it to try out as a new sketchbook. It was a similar size to my old sketchbook, so I redrew the seaweed image to compare the differences of the paper.

It is pretty clear that the drawing on bristol is a lot crisper. The color didn’t bleed very much at all. In fact, in the areas where there is some bleeding, I attribute that mostly to my own impatience.

In comparing the two sketchbooks side by side, the actual book is a lot neater and more contained. The bristol is a glued pad of paper, so the sheets pop right out when you turn the page.

Despite the messiness of the paper and the potential for disorganization, I must say that for most drawings, even sketches, I’d prefer to control where the color goes, over being able to blend colors. I could always make a little “sketch box” for my bristol paper to make it more portable and easily contained. Plus, the detached pages make it easy to get a good scan, and the square pages are easy to cut up and reassemble when drawing patterns. Plus the pad of bristol is less than 1/5 the cost of the bound sketchbook! Seems like there are lots of pluses. Also seems like I’ve found my new sketchbook!