Linda Mann Artist

My canvas has finally arrived! Before I can begin painting, I need to get my drawing onto it. First, I tape tracing paper onto the drawing and trace all of the lines in pencil.

Below is the finished tracing untaped from my drawing.

I flip the tracing over to the wrong side, and using a soft pencil, I scribble over all of the areas containing lines that I want to transfer.

After trimming the excess paper away, so the tracing is the exact size of the canvas, I tape the tracing paper, right side up, to the canvas, and carefully trace all of the lines, using a hard pencil.

As I lift up the tracing below, you can see all of the marks transferred to the canvas.

The tracing process always results in some loss of detail. Any time you are drawing without reference to the set-up, precision is lost, and to some extent, you are guessing.  I have to go back to the set-up and correct any errors that found their way in.

Next I’ll spray a light coating of fixative on the canvas to set the pencil, so that it won’t dissolve when I apply the first paint layer. Then, I’ll finally be ready to paint!