One Line Drawings

One Line Drawing is a technique where you trace a design or image onto another sheet of paper via the use of carbon/graphite paper (which, when pressure is applied, transfers indents to paper placed below). The reason it is called One Line Drawing is due to not lifting the pen/pencil used to trace the image once you start.

Research

The images I chose were picked as a result of how interesting they would probably look if traced using one line. My main idea was to see how the sections of an insect’s body would look when using the technique and how I would create detailed areas, such as splashing water.

Materials & Traced Images

Instead of using carbon/graphite paper for these designs, I used a sheet of paper with a section coloured in using oil pastels. I did this because there were not many sheets of carbon/graphite paper available to use.

With the water splashes on the dolphin image, generally scribbling in the direction of the water seemed the best way to produce a good result while under the restriction of ‘one line’. Likewise with the bee, I used scribbles to provide the detail for the wings, but left the main body.

Final Designs

The final designs using the oil pastels were pretty faint as a result of the light colour that was used. In my opinion, the dolphin turned out the best because how I was able to create the detail of the splashing water.

To test out how carbon/graphite paper would work, I decided to create one last design which was definitely a lot more visible in comparison. One difference I made when creating the extra design was to work into the image after tracing to add extra details. This technically violated the rules of a One Line Drawing, but I believe doing this wasn’t adding any big changes.