by Martha Jane Bradford
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Here are my suggestions: Split the workspace
Having the photograph and the drawing side-by-side on the
monitor lets you gauge the overall effectiveness of how you’re drawing.
Tracing Paper option: This enables you to be accurate about the shape and
placement of objects. Designate the reference photo as the clone source in the File
menu. When you wish to view the reference photo under the drawing as if you were
using a lightbox, click the tracing paper icon in the vertical scroll bar (upper right corner of the file window). If it seems preferable to devote the whole of the workspace to the drawing, minimize the reference photo and maximize the drawing and click “Hide Palettes” in the Window section of the program’s menu bar. Tracing paper will still work.

Photo on a layer: Copy the reference photo, paste it as a separate layer into the
drawing, and drag it to the bottom of the stack. The opacity of the reference photo layer can be adjusted to make the drawing marks show up better. When the drawing is finished, delete the reference photo. The only disadvantage to this alternative is that it makes the file-size larger.

Figure 8. The tones layers belonging to the same drawing
(with the black background turned off).

How to Spot-check Your Values: make a black-and-white version of the photograph, created with “Grayscale” Mode in Photoshop or by running a black-and-white Two-Point Gradient on it in Painter. If you set the black-and-white version as the clone source and clone a spot of it into the drawing with the Straight Cloner brush, you can see if your tones are too light or too dark. Then hit ”Undo” to get rid of the cloned piece of the photo.

Cartoon Layer: For objects that are not decipherable at the zoom level at which you need to draw, create a layer for a cartoon and cartoon the object with a smallish (5 pixel) Flat Color Pen and a contrasting color (red is good) at whatever zoom level you can best see it. Then go to your drawing layer with the cartoon visible but locked and draw the object at the most comfortable zoom. You may want to adjust the transparency of the cartoon layer to make it just barely visible so as not to obscure parts of your brushstrokes. (See Figure 9.)

Proof the Drawing: As the drawing progresses, it is a good idea to proof it full-size from time to time as the ultimate strategy for being able to see what you’ve been doing. Make all the layers that are not part of the drawing, such as the photo or the cartoon, invisible and then save the file as a Tiff. A box will appear warning you that the layers will be merged with the canvas; say “OK.”

Close Painter and open Photoshop. Go to “Preferences” in the File menu, select “General” and then “Interpolation: Bicubic.” Open your drawing file and resize it (this works better than resizing in Painter). Edit-Copy/File-New/Edit-Paste sections of the drawing that are the right size to print on your proofing printer and stick the sections together with double-sided Scotch TM tape.

Figure 9. An example of a cartoon for transitions that are difficult
to interpret on the reference photo when drawing zoomed-in.

Save! Save As!
I should have said this a lot sooner. Save your photographs and drawings frequently to prevent losing a morning’s work to a crash or power failure.

• Save and rename
Every time you make a major change or at least every three or four working sessions, save and then “Save As” and give the file a new name.

• Save to a CD
Once a week or so, it pays to save the latest versions of the file to a write-able CD-ROM. That way if a virus eats your hard-drive, you still have your drawing.

• File-naming System
Give the piece a title, let’s say “Sunset,” and then add the date and time: “Sunset
020926_1053” (translates as “Sunset” as it existed on September 26, 2002 at 10:53 am – use military time for pm).
Numeric numbering allows your files can be automatically sorted by name in the order that the drawing progressed, making it easy to revert to an earlier version if necessary. You will never overwrite a file that way because the same minute never comes around twice.

• Keep a Notebook
It helps to have a record of what you did to each file. It’s not unusual to get toward the end of a long project and discover that you have somehow corrupted part of the drawing, left a patch of cloned photo in or forgotten to invert the paper when drawing with white, etc. Being able to go back to an earlier version and clone in a section or Edit-Copy/Edit-Paste whole layers from before the corruption means you don’t have to totally go back to square one to fix things.

Figure 10. The finished drawing of “Balsamina”
with all the layers and tones visible.

• Final Save
Once the drawing is finished, burn the file onto 3 CDs (one for the studio, one for the safetydeposit box, and one for the atelier). (See Figure 10.)

Editioning the Drawing

• Edition size
Decide how many copies will be in the total edition. You may print 10% of that number as Artist’s Proofs in addition to the edition. Generally, the smaller the edition, the higher the price of the individual print.

• Multiple Image Sizes
You drew the image at a particular size but it may look good both larger and smaller as well. With digital imagery, you have the option to do subsets of the edition in multiple sizes. When signing a print from such an edition, you can account for the variations by designating each print “Sunset, variation 1/3, 2/3 or 3/3, 1/50 – 50/50.”

• Paper
Select a paper and paper size. I favor Somerset Textured because it is heavy-weight and stands up to handling. I choose margins of 2 or more inches so that the image doesn’t suffer if a corner does get dinged.

• The BAT
Take or mail a CD copy of the file or files and a final working proof of each image size to a printer who specializes in archival-quality Iris prints. Before printing any of the edition, the printer will provide you with a proof of the Iris print. It is often too dark or, in the case of the digital color drawings, the color may have shifted in the conversion to CMYK, so the printer may have to pull several proofs before you sign the B.A.T. (bon ‘a tirer, which is French for OK-to pull the prints) for the edition. If you are doing multiple sizes, it is good to proof each size separately. (See Figure 11.)

Figure 11. The printer’s apprentice checks a work-in-progress on the Iris.

• Print-on-Demand
Since the Iris printing process is very expensive and since the computer files can be stored indefinitely without changing, it is unusual to print the whole edition at once; more often just a few copies are printed at a time as they are needed.

• Permanence
Wilhelm Imaging Research, Inc. , (www.wilhelm-research.com) rates the permanence of a fourcolor black and white image printed on 100% rag fine art paper by an Iris ink jet printer using American Ink Jet’s ink set called Pinnacle Gold as lasting without visible change for 100 to 150 years under their standard lighting conditions. (See Figure 12.) For comparison, a watercolor is permanent for approximately 25 years and the most archival photograph for 60 years. In dark
storage Iris prints are absolutely permanent.

Figure 12. This is a close-up of the four print-heads, one for each ink color
(Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black), along with a print-in-progress. Printing
even black-and-white images with four colors makes the blacks richer.

Note: Download a PDF version of this article and print it up for future reference.

Copyright © 2002 Martha Jane Bradford. All rights reserved. For more information, see www.marthavista.com.