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.

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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.

With three drawings figured out, I was pretty much stumped about what to do for the fourth. I had several options, but none of them seemed quite right. I was hemming and hawing over it one night with my mom and she pointed to one of my practice drawings that I’d done to get used to tracing pencil on bristol, and said “you should do those pea pods”.

Well, to me, the drawing she pointed at didn’t look anything like pea pods, but I quickly got over that discrepancy as I thought, “Pea pods! Brilliant! What could be cuter than pea pods!?”

I quickly whipped up a sketch.

My sister-in-law loved it.

If you haven’t noticed already, the unifying element amongst the three drawings are little tiny critters. Little fishies, small bumble bees, teeny inchworms, and? The snails in the above drawing were actually added after I did the final sketch. First I tried another drawing of pea pods with butterflies.

I liked it, but the butterflies weren’t tiny enough. At this point, I wasn’t 100% sure about the pea pods any more. Another thought stuck in my mind because at one point my sister-in-law had suggested that fruit might be a good addition to the series of drawings. I had done a little sketch of lots of different little fruits.

I liked the fruit, but also felt that it wasn’t a really cohesive composition for the series. Honestly I’m not sure how the next idea hit me. Maybe I was just being silly and decided to make the peas into blueberries. In any case, the next sketch was decidedly more colorful and fruity.

“Fruit in pea pods? What? That’s crazy! and awesome! and really cute and fun and perfect for a little girls room,” was essentially my line of thought as I drew the fruity pods.

I wasn’t satisfied with the corn or the raspberries in the first sketch. I decided to go with lemons instead of oranges, so I could do orange persimmons, and get rid of the corn. I drew some strawberries that turned out very cute, which took the place of the raspberries.

There I finally had it. And I also had my critter too. The small snails were perfect.

I did a sketch to figure out the colors for the strawberries, pea pods, and blueberries.

I used pencil again on the final drawing since the placement was important. I noticed that my tracing skills are already improving, though it’s still tricky.

I think this final drawing was the perfect addition to the series. All four drawings were really fun to work on. In the process I learned a lot, improved some of my skills, and made my sister-in-law very happy, so it was a good project in many ways.

As I was working on the drawings, I knew that i wanted to have a flower that was big and bold.

My sister-in-law had originally chosen two sketches of flowers that she liked from my sketchbook.

She was drawn much more to the peach and green drawing, but I liked the softer blue drawing, so for a while I was a little stalled out about what to do.

It wasn’t until I drew on a “scrap” piece of bristol that the idea started to evolve. I wanted to get used to drawing on the bristol, which was the material I was using for the final drawings, so I drew three of the bluish flowers. However, when they were drawn, they were a little more elongated than the original sketch, and reminded me more of pine cones than of flowers. So I went with it, and I started to color them in like pine cones.

Before finishing the color, I decided to try out a few combinations on little mini sketches.

Finding a combination of colors that I liked, I finished the drawing.

Looking back at the little sketches, I thought they looked like little clusters of petals and thought they might make a pretty flower. On an extra piece of bristol, I drew a number of little petal clusters in a radial pattern, and then connected them with thin stems.

I really liked how this turned out, so I tried several color combinations in my sketchbook.

I liked the softness of the first two, but I decided that I really wanted a bold, colorful flower. After working on the sketch with many color possibilities, I decided on going with a bold background, and light petals.

I discovered that the colors blended beautifully on the paper in my sketchbook, but would hardly blend or soften at all on the bristol. Also, the color of the marker on the bristol tends to show up significantly darker or brighter, so I had to adjust the colors slightly as I was working.

The mulberry color I used for the background showed up really intense on the bristol, but in a good way. However, after testing the blue that I intended to use, it was much too bright on the bristol, so I ended up using a light gray for the petals instead of blue. The gray was a lot softer which helped balance the drawing, while maintaining the contrast of light to dark.

I like how the drawing and colors turned out. It lends the right amount of bold color to the series.

In the next post I’ll write about how fruit ended up in the pea pods drawing.

Drawing the final Heart Flowers offered some interesting challenges.

After completing several sketches, I had a basic idea of what I wanted to draw.

I was happy with the hearts themselves, but I tried out a couple of variations of leaves and grass and sky. I even borrowed an idea from design school, and cut up a copy of the sketch and rearranged it a bit, leaving out the sky and making the stems longer.

My first attempt at a final drawing didn’t work out so well.

The shapes were way too wobbly. Not what I was after at all. Plus the grass looked more like a picket fence than anything that’s actually growing. And I forgot the leaves. The colors I chose seemed a little garish as well. The bumble bees were good though, so they would stay.

The lines turned out so wobbly because the piece of paper is significantly bigger than the sketchbooks I’m used to working in (8×8 inches vs 5×5 inches). Also there were a lot of straight lines, which are difficult to draw freehand. To overcome this, I decided to work a little differently than I am used to. For the final drawing, I used a pencil first.

This was great because I could erase any wobbliness and make sure it looked just how I wanted. Tracing the pencil lines with ink proved challenging, probably because I’m not really used to it and haven’t practiced tracing a pencil line with a pen as much as I’ve practiced simply drawing with a pen. Even though some of the lines ended up a little wiggly and awkward, it was a lot better than the freehanded ink lines. The pencil provided guidelines and good placement and composition, and probably no one else but me would notice the “imperfections” anyway.

After I got the line drawing finished, I tried a bunch of different color combinations before coloring the final drawing.

I loved the center heart colored red, but wanted an overall soft cheerful look, so I chose some bold and some lighter colors. I also worked out a better solution for the grass.

I was really pleased with the texture I achieved in the grass. It looks a lot more organic, and not at all fence-like.

In the next post I’ll write about the Inchworm Flower drawing.

The four drawings are done! Just in time for little Mia Lillian (my newest niece!) to be born.

The fish under the waves drawing was the most straightforward of all the drawings. From sketch to finished drawing, not much changed, and I didn’t have to fuss with it too much to figure out the colors or the composition.

original sketches, just to refresh your memory

I scanned in the black and white drawing of the final.

The composition is basically the same as the original sketches, except for the school of fish that decided to swim in a slightly different area of the ocean.

The trickiest thing was working on a larger scale.

True, it’s not that much larger. The final drawing was on an 8×8 inch piece of bristol, and my sketchbook is about 5×5 inches, but the size was different enough that I had to draw the waves three times before I got them right.

When the waves finally looked right, then all I had to do was draw the fish and add color.

Especially for the waves, it was great to have a sketch to work from. It was still rather free form in terms of where the different colors were placed, but it was great to have the reference of what colors I used.

When the waves were colored in, I wasn’t sure what color to use for the fish. I thought the blue in the sketch was too dark, but instead of trying out a color for the first time on the final, I made a couple of copies of the drawing and colored in the copies to figure out what color to use. After trying out a few different shades of blue, I decided to try orange. I liked the way it added some extra contrast and cheerful warmth to the composition, so I decided to color the fish orange in final.

This is the first final drawing of the series, and it felt really good to finish it up. In my next post I’ll go over the details of the Heart Flowers drawing.