Draw small, blow up big
At the end of yesterday’s post, I mentioned how taking a small drawing and blowing it up to a few times its original size on a photocopier or a scanner can have some startling results.
This often works best with doodles rather than considered drawings. Increasing the size magnifies details you wouldn’t normally focus on, like the thickness of the line where your pen slows down, or slight variations in colour.
Today’s task: Find a doodle, or if you haven’t got one to hand, draw something very quick and simple. A drawing of between 2 and 4 cm across will work best for this.
Blow it up to somewhere around 10 to 15 cm and then come and post it here.
My example: this was drawn with quite a fine pen - the first thing you notice is how very thick the lines become. Those tiny specks I drew with the point of the nib have become large circles. You can see where a line often flicks slightly at its beginning and end - see the curve of the top of the head, for example. If you analyse your own drawings in this way, you might see elements you wish to deliberately imitate when you return to your usual scale.
You might find more interesting effects with media like chalk or pencil crayons.
Posted: June 6th, 2007 under Technique.
Comments: 9
9 Comments
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This is one I did about a month ago - the dark black line at the bottom was already printed on the page - I can only assume that I was drawing a sort of stylised person, probably based in the back of my mind, on the msn messenger people.
The original is about 2cm tall. Biro on bog standard photocopied A4 paper.
Gosh, that’s biro??!Look at the smudgy effect at the end of the lines and the woolly edges - it’s like black paint! It is a bit like looking down a microscope. I love modern life.
I know! I was intrigued by how much variation there is in the darkness of the lines. On the original it all looks just… well, black.
By the way, I also noticed (while sneaking on to this site from work today) that the problem with the way the comments show up in IE are something to do with the Google Ads on the side - the comments don’t start showing until after the bottom of the Ads.
You may well already know this, but it was a tiny ‘aha’ moment for me.
Ooh, no, I didn’t know that, thank you! Since I have earned about £1.50 from them this whole time, maybe it’s time for a total rethink.
You are right though! I’ve shifted them round and it’s got rid of the problem - cheers!!
Hurrah!
Actually, it looks like I spoke too soon. :( But thanks anyway - you are definitely onto something and I bet kake or someone else knowledgable would be able to tell me based on this knowledge.
I suspect this might be easier if using a scanner rather than a digital photo. Here’s mine, though. It’s done with my propelling pencil, and it’s of my thumb on the pencil drawing my hand drawing my hand drawing my hand drawing… you get the idea.
Click through for the original drawing and links to a couple of other crops.
I love the graininess. Looks kind of ‘proper’ doesn’t it? If you know what I mean.