Wide to Receive: Drawing Technique - Transferring an Image

I want to share a drawing technique that I picked up many, many years ago from an artist I used to know. By no means am I an "artist", so this isn't exactly a "trade secret" but I've been drawing for most of my life, and this little technique has come in handy on more than a few occasions. This is a great technique if you are lazy, or have a hard time drawing the same thing twice. **Obviously this whole process is simplified and much quicker in the digital age, and can be done much easier if you have a computer tablet/pen. This is an "old school" technique using just pencil & paper so expect it to be a bit cumbersome!**

Scenario: You have a sketch that you want to "transfer" onto another paper, but you don't want to re-draw it. There might be various different scenarios that would require this: Maybe you've done a tracing onto a piece of tracing paper & now want to put it onto a page in your sketchbook. Maybe you've done a masterful doodle on a crappy piece of paper and you want to incorporate it onto a "good" sheet of drawing paper, onto a canvas, etc. Whatever. The basic premise is you need to duplicate the drawing without wanting to start all over again from scratch.

For example, here's not a bad drawing I did on a torn piece of loose leaf (Ok, we'll it's no masterpiece, but let's just pretend for the purposes of the exercise!) Let's say I want to make this cowboy into a clean, inked drawing on proper paper.

So, how am I going to get this sketch onto a different sheet of paper without going through the trouble of trying to exactly re-draw it all over again?

Steps:

1. Flip your original over, so you're working on the back side of the paper. Locate the area of the back of your drawing. (If you bear down hard enough when you draw, you'll easily see it. If your lines are light, just flip the paper over to compare... or simply hold your paper up to the light so you can see it through the paper.)

2. Still on the back of the image: With your pencil, make thick, dark shading lines that will completely cover the entire area of your image. Don't worry if it looks messy -- it's basically going to be a big scribble! It's crucial that your shading is dark & full, leaving no gaps. Criss-crossing your strokes makes the best coverage. Hold your paper up to the light to ensure your shading is covering the back of the image completely. If possible, choose a pencil in the "B" tonal range. Here I'll use a 3B pencil. (Any pencil will do, but you'll find the lighter "H" range pencils don't work very well.)

Once you've completely covered the back of the image, you'll have something that looks like this:

3. Get the paper that you want to transfer the image to... this is going to be your "destination" paper, so to speak. Place your image "face up" onto the new paper, being careful to place it exactly where you want it. Tape it down with a few small bits of masking tape. It's important to secure it because you don't want it to move during the transfer. Believe me: if the image moves even a little during the transfer, this will not work so be sure to anchor it down with the tape!!! (But use the tape sparingly because tape can potentially destroy your original drawing & the paper too!) Be sure to leave at least one edge or corner loose so you can peel back & have a peek.

4. Take a nice, sharp pencil. Any kind of pencil will do as long as it's sharp... but I would recommend an HB or maybe 2H. Now, you're going to re-trace every line of your image. The lines you make will need to be decisive: Any line that you make will transfer onto your "destination" page, so only go over the lines you want to keep! You'll need to bear down fairly hard with your pencil... but not too hard because too much pressure will "indent" your good paper. As you make your lines the "dirt" of the pencil shading on the back will transfer onto the good paper. The result is kind of a colouring book style outline of your image on the new paper. You'll want to peel back that loose corner & peek often to make sure you've retraced all your lines and that nothing is missing. Be careful to always put the top image back in exactly the same spot... if you accidentally move the alignment of the image, the tracing below will be off kilter!

5. When you're done re-tracing every line that you want to transfer, carefully peel off the tape & remove the top image. Underneath you'll have the skeleton of your image. So now you have the same base image, duplicated. You can then start working the details of your final drawing. If there are any shading smudges on the paper around your image, just lightly erase them.

So, what you end up with on the good paper looks like this: