I’ve completed about 80% of this first final drawing, which is a good time for me to step away for a few days before revisiting and making further changes. Primarily I’ll be working on the more subtle passages of grey tone and evaluating the relationships between the layers. Initially each layer has to be treated separately just to get things going; in the final stages of the drawing process there’s a significant amount of working back and forth between the layers to achieve cohesiveness and fluidity.
I’ve been experimenting with simulating the effect of several layers on a single layer of Dura-Lar. This is quite different than when I was working on these drawings last summer, when I was placing one figure per layer. The bottom layer of this drawing has three figures, each of which had to be articulated very differently in order to represent their depth in the space. I found myself using a razor blade more frequently in this bottom layer to gain more subtlety and softness in the figures. As I scraped with the razor blade, I started thinking about my drawing process actually starts with the sanding of the Dura-Lar surface and continues with the lithographic crayon and razor blade scraping. This links the surface preparation into the drawing process and gets me thinking about the sanding as more than just grunt work.
