Tuesday Tips and Techniques: Sketch Once, Copy Twice!

Take your labor intensive sketches and drawings and let your copy machine do the work for you!  I tend to use a lot of bird imagery in my work, and drawing these wonderful creatures doesn't come easy for me.  I decided to  do some drawings of birds that I could photograph and store on my computer.  Using my Paint program, I can alter the images in a number of ways.

I took two pages of my original drawings and altered them in Paint.  I played with contrast, brightness and color saturation.

I altered the sizes and the directions of the images, and I also cropped some of the images tiling an entire sheet.

You needn't draw images specifically for copying.  Magazine and catalog images also work with this method.

I photographed this lion from an old catalog and uploaded the image to my computer.  I played with the image in Paint, removing the color and playing with the tint and contrast.  I also made a mirror image.  I wonder what secrets they will guard one day?

Going back to my birds, I cut several of the different sizes and designed a composition around them.  I adhered them to the page with Mod Podge and worked around them with oil pastels.

Speaking of birds, Keith captured this great shot of our Japanese Maple filled with blackbirds during last week's (hopefully) last blast of winter.

Photo:  Keith Thompson

Whatever your favorite imagery is, I hope you'll find this a useful method to use in your journal.  While you're at it, why not flip through your journals and apply this method to some of your favorite pages.  It's always nice to revisit your old pages and see them in a new way.  I hope that you're safe and warm and allowing yourself plenty of time to "Celebrate, LOVE, and Create!"  Spring is right around the corner - a little birdie told me so!