old favorites brought back to light
I’ve been experimenting with a “new technique”. Well, a slight variation anyway. These might not look that new at first glance 
Actually they’re quite old! Some of my favorites from San Francisco. So these must be at least three year old drawings. What I’m playing around with here is a trick to allow me add watercolor to my old sketchbook pages.
A lot of my early on-location drawings were ballpoint pen and brush marker on ‘cover stock’. Sort of one step above photocopy paper. I really like this combination. Black and white line is great for a rapid sketch, and the smooth paper is very nice for drawing. Pens just zip along the surface. For a few years I was carrying a stack of this stuff everywhere.
But when I get a pen drawing I really like – I regret not being able to add much color. You can paint on cover stock if you’re careful – but it won’t take much water before it buckles.
There was a time I might have been tempted to color sketches digitally. That can have a nice effect – but it’s not what I’m looking for these days.
What I’ve done here is print a ghosted image of the original sketch on a 140lb watercolor paper (using my new Epson 4900 printer’s manual feed). Then I tape it down and watercolor over the faint line drawing, as if I was painting a pencil drawing. I scan that back in, and composite the original black line drawing on top of the new color image. (Using a multiply layer in photoshop). I can also experiment with tinting the line drawing – I used a bit of a purple line on these. And it’s possible to significantly enlarge your drawing while doing this - if you scan it at 1200 dpi for example.
I’m going to try a bit more of this to see what else I can come up with.
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