The correct material can lead to easier drawings

No matter the activity you're participating in, their are required materials. For pencil drawing there are many optional materials that can enhance the drawing. There are special papers, erasers, pencils, blenders and more. For Christmas I was fortunate enough to receive tracing paper from my parents. Once I opened the present I remembered that in the book, Drawing Manga, Faces and Bodies, by Anna Southgate and Yishan Li, they had mentioned this paper. What a coincidence! The day following Christmas I tried out the tracing paper. On Pg. 8 of Drawing Manga, Faces and Bodies, it says that "Tracing paper provides a smooth surface, helping you to sketch freely. It is also forgiving-- any mistakes can easily be erased several times over." (Southgate and Li, Pg.8) I tested this out. I specifically tested out the erasing ability on the tracing paper. I drew several lines ranging from soft to hard. I expected a little residue left after erasing, just from experience with all of my other drawing notebooks. To my shock there was not even a smudge left behind! After erasing the hardly drawn lines, the paper looked good as new. This will impact my drawings a lot. For my style of art I tend to erase a lot and due to this I have to draw very lightly on all of my notebooks. When I don't draw lightly you can see the erase marks, which doesn't compliment a picture. If I have durable paper with a good eraser quality then I can outline my sketches a lot more. By outlining my sketches more this will lead to less silly mistakes, like shading to far or not far enough. Thanks to this, I now have a new favorite drawing material!

Since I had a new, better place to draw on, I decided that I would like to test it out. I did this by drawing a new picture, of course with a tip from Southgate and Li. If you have read any other blog post by me, you could tell I have a lot of trouble with hands. The shape, proportion and almost everything about it is difficult for me. I decided to apply yet another hand position tip to my art. I tried a new position that they called Grasping Fingers. To draw this position, you have to imagine the character's fingers are holding something. The example they gave in the book was a tennis racket. (Southgate and Li, Pg. 58). I interpreted this as leaving a small gap in the hand for a item. For the item I chose to figuratively put in my characters hand, It was an ice cream with a stick handle. Due to this I made the hand hole for my character smaller because ice cream sticks are tiny and thin. To my surprise, I was extremely happy with the outcome. Maybe the tracing paper really did help make a difference in the art, but the hand placement, in my opinion, is my best yet. Southgate and Li's tip on imagining an item in the hand really helped. While drawing the character, it seemed more real because I could personally relate to the pose and even use my own hand as a model. This really will affect my future sketches, Firstly because the pose turned out well, giving me a new pose I like to draw. Secondly if I examine this pose, I might be able to use it to help my other hand drawings. Lastly it reassured my thoughts that tracing paper is definitely the paper I will continue to use while drawing in the future!

 When you draw do you usually use tracing paper, normal paper, or another type of paper?
Southgate, Anna, and Yishan Li. Drawing Manga Faces and Bodies. New York: Rosen, 2013. Print.