I made two “large” purchases this summer in support of my artistic endeavors. This week I made two more – but those are really for business (Windows 7 and Adobe CS5). This summer I purchased a wooden easel and an Artograph projector. Artograph is the open secret that many artists use (but apparently don’t talk about) to transfer their drawings onto canvas. Over the past year and a half I’ve tried several methods to transfer. Freehand didn’t work so well, so I tried gridding. That still didn’t work – as canvases are never really exactly the sizes they say they are. Next I tried using transfer paper, but that proved to be tedious, dirty and often inaccurate as there is no way to tell if you’ve pressed hard enough until you lift up the paper…and by lifting it up you’ve lost your bearings. I started researching again on a better way. At first I was going to buy an old digital projector from craigslist – but then I stumbled onto this. A trip to Aaron Brothers the next day on my lunch break and I was taking one of these home. The only tough thing about using the projector is getting the projector at the right level. You’ll see below how I stacked it on pieces of wood to get it centered on the canvas. Otherwise it works great. All I have to do is make a 5″x5″ print of my drawing and then I can blow it up to any size canvas. I can go back and project the drawing later (as I did with this painting at a much later stage) to make sure everything is in the right spot. Something which isn’t really advisable with transfer paper (you don’t want graphite on your canvas once you’re already working in acrylic).
The image below is my test of this process. I decided to work on a painting not from “life” – but from one of my crazy sketches (which I’ll post more of on the site if I can get windows 7’s “xp mode” to work with my old scanner).
The other piece of the puzzle was my “real” easel. For a year and a half I painted all my large pieces by setting them on the floor and leaning them against my desk. I would often paint standing on my knees. This was not the most ergonomic solution. The new easel fixes all that. I also bought a professional painters mask at Lowes to deal with the lack of adequate ventilation on my room. However, apparently the “paint smell” that I’d been smelling is really the smell of the untreated wood used on the easel (it stinks!). I thought it would go away eventually, but it has been over a month and I can still smell that easel. Anybody have any suggestions? Can I neutralize that smell with something? Should I coat it with some kind of wood seal?
Oh – and this also partially shows the reorganizing of my room that I did in May. Obviously the bed is no longer under the window…. I figured that was smarter so the paint fumes don’t waft over my nose at night on their way out the window. However, being farther from the window also means the air is hotter… and I can’t sleep when it is hot. It is hot in the valley. I don’t get much sleep anymore.
