A Live and Learn Moment

Sometimes being an artist is a trial and error experience. We try things and sometimes it's a fabulous success and other times it's an abject failure. Then sometimes it falls somewhere in between, as with this drawing.

My drawing of Lance is finished, but there was a problem that kind of caught me off-guard. I like to tape my larger pieces of drawing paper down to my clipboard and I've been doing it for quite some time. I just use a regular masking tape and have not had any problems with doing this.

The problem that came up this time was that when I started the Lance drawing I was just a few days away from moving to a new house. So the unfinished drawing stayed taped to the clipboard for almost three months. When I finished the drawing last night and peeled the tape off, well, you guess it. The adhesive on the tape had become one with the paper and now there was a sticky residue all around the outside of the paper.

Being as how I hadn't sprayed the drawing at that point, there was plenty of loose graphite to go around and some of it ended up in the sticky white border of the paper. Which obviously caused a real mess, making the drawing unsaleable in its present condition.

I took it to Aaron Brothers this afternoon to see if they would cut the white portion off, but they wouldn't do it. So the solution we came up with was in the mat. I had them cut the opening in the mat to cover the white portion of the paper, thus covering up the sticky, dirty part of the paper.

After coming home and placing the mat and drawing in the frame I have to say that I think it looks pretty darn good. So, without further ado, I present His Lanceness. Graphite drawing on 14x17 80# drawing paper.

©2009 Dave Casey
HIS LANCENESS
Graphite pencil on paper, 17 x 14"
Available WITH frame at my Etsy store or my ArtFire store - $89.99
DG Casey's World of Art - Etsy
DG Casey's World of Art - ArtFire
Also available as a print at my Red Bubble store - from $14.25
DG Casey's World of Art - Red Bubble