This is a weird question. I’ve just been asked by a publisher in Germany to submit for reproduction in a forthcoming biography of an American author (whom I’ve published a book about) a drawing I made of the author reading from his work in 1979. This drawing (a pencil sketch on the back of a typescript, with backwards lettering clearly visible) has appeared on a website devoted to the author, which is where the German publisher found it.
Since I can’t find the original sketch after a half-hour’s search, and since the web-copy is pretty dreadful, and since the original’s quality is “Fairly Shitty” anyway, I offered simply to do another sketch, based on the first one, but to do it with real drawing tools on real drawing paper. But, although I’ve actually had my oil-paintings hang in a Manhattan gallery recently and am otherwise fairly skilled in the visual arts (for a writer, certainly), I haven’t worked in pencil and paper for a few decades so: could some Doper with line-drawing experience suggest a few items for purchase? A good drawing tool, and what I’m looking for in drawing paper, and anything else I’m not thinking of?
BTW, I tried copying the web-photo of the drawing on typing paper with a #2 pencil, and found it surprisingly difficult to reproduce–I was thinking “Damn! I was good in the old days!” but I’m hoping I’ll loosen up soon.
I don’t know if this will help, especially if you have a complicated background with type, but in Adobe Illustrator you can import a sketch/photo of a sketch and do something called “Live Trace”.
This quickly and automatically turns your sketch into a drawing that can be sharpened and modified, using Adobe Illustrator tools.
This is a “trick” people use when, for instance, getting an old business card from someone and trying to re-create/improve upon an image/sketch that no longer exists in the original form.
Do you know anyone with the software and minimal skills in Adobe Illustrator?
How about a nice, clean, white polymer eraser? They are so darn useful when drawing with pencils! The kids keep losing mine, but I will keep buying more!
If you’ve got some paper with a bit of purchase to it (something that I didn’t appreciate until college), how about some burnishing sticks, too? I don’t know if you want to deliberately smudge your drawing, but my eraser recommendation should help with that if you change your mind.
Uh, all I need is for people to know my real name and bombard me with e-mails, starting “Hey, Pseudo, you big pussy, you faker, you stink on ice, you can’t draw and your writing sucks and your momma dresses you funny, which route do your kids take home from school, anyway?” like I get PMed here all the time.
Thanks for the suggestion about the eraser. I live across the street from a big arts-supplies store, and I’ll check that out tonight. What does “a bit of purchase” mean? Some graininess in the paper?
When I was in high school - and one of the few students who wasn’t taking art as a blow-off elective class - I preferred drawing on printer/copier paper. There’s a method to that, too (you’ll find bristol board similarly smooth), but it’s better suited for inks and art markers, not pencils.
Paper with a little bit of grit to it can do wonders when drawing with pencils, charcoal, chalks, or pastels - that’s where my suggestion of deliberately smearing your work comes from. You can use burnishing sticks (pencil-shaped utensils made of tightly-coiled paper) to smudge areas of color on your drawing, and at least some measure of texture on the paper is essential for this to come out looking good.
I’ve been purely digital for a couple years, but I liked bristol board or absurdly white laser copier paper when I did more work on paper. I’ve got some Office Max laser paper that’s 24lb. and 96 brightness that I’ve been working through for the odd sketch, it works really well.
I, personally, use a mechanical pencil with 2b lead and a Japanese white click eraser (shaped as a pen, it feeds out some eraser when you click the clip down a tick).
As an aside, I know you don’t have the original, but if you find it, you can reduce the black that’s showing through by putting a sheet of black material on the back and either scanning or photocopying it. At least that’s what I did way back when I wore an apron at Kinko’s.
If you want to keep the same feel of the original, you might want to use a copy of the original on a lightboard and lightly sketch over it to get the dimensions and feel solid before you get bogged down in rendering. I don’t know if they still do, but the FedEx Office stores used to have a lightboard inset into their counters on the worktables near the copiers.