Sketching for Making: Creating and Photographing the Original Art

Moving on to the method as it currently stands, I start as before with an ink drawing that is as close to mindless doodling as I can get at that moment. I believe that drawing while distracted would work best, such as at a restaurant during a conversation or while listening to music. It is important to let the mind be as free as possible, with little involvement from the conscience.

Original ink drawing

Here is an example of why this is necessary: After I made the first in this series of drawings, had worked out the next steps and knew where it would lead, I found that making the next drawing was very difficult. The main obstacle, I soon realized, was me trying to "draw something." My awareness and anticipation were getting in the way, my hand had become self conscious in much the same way as a person does when being closely watched by another who is telling you to act naturally. It just ain't happening...

Scanning the drawing for motifs

So far the method is as before, but next comes the first innovation: using the camera on my iPhone. It occurred to me that instead of cutting out little sections of the drawing, it was better and easier to scan the drawing using the display of my iPhone, then clicking pictures as I go. The obvious advantage being that the selections are fluid and unbounded by context or scale; I can make numerous photos of the same section involving different images together and I can zoom in or out by simply moving the camera. And I can take LOTS of pictures, increasing my chances of finding something that inspires a great project.

Selecting a section of the drawing

Image acquired, a little iCloud magic makes my photos available instantly on all my devices. I switch to my new iPad Air 2 with Sketchbook Pro installed and begin the selection process. After reviewing the photos, the image is imported into Sketchbook as the bottom or reference layer of what will become a multi-layered sketch.

I'm not going to go into any of the technicalities of using graphics software. Any of them will do if you know how to use it well enough to suit your purposes. I use Sketchbook for a number of reasons: it's cheap, it operates easily across all of my mobile devices and my PC. All of the drawings can be shared via the cloud making it fairly seamless to work whenever or wherever I want at any given moment. Personally I find it a bit limited and will eventually move to CorelDraw, but for now it does what I need. Did I mention it's cheap?

One word about choosing software: try to find an app that has "layers." Layers allow you to work over the top of existing art without disturbing what's underneath. Layers can be turned on and off, moved to different positions in the order of the stack, made more or less opaque or simply deleted. Another useful tool is an "eyedropper" which allows you to select a color from the existing drawing and replicate it as the virtual "ink" for your pen or brush tool. Also basic functions such as rotation, translation, scaling and text are incredibly useful. A variety of brushes, pens and textures is great to have as well.

NEXT: Developing the Motif as a Sketch