Nobody’s Perfect!

Nobody’s perfect, how true! But how annoying is it when you start a sketchbook page and after a couple of hours work you make a blooper! Here’s the sketch and on the right the faceless statue! What went wrong! 

Well basically something that happens to me often, I love sketching statuary but I always get heavy handed on the face. There are several reasons for this, often you are dealing with strong shadows, then eyeball-less eye sockets that look weird anyway and I have problems with Patrician noses ....... these problems combined result in this! 

One solution is gouache/white acrylic, however the ink in this pen then came through, so I tried Tipp Ex, unfortunately I got heavy handed again and then the surface was too lumpy to draw on, game over! 

Not quite, in the dim and distant past, before everything was done on the computer, I learned intercutting to eradicate mistakes. What you do is take a sharp scalpel and a piece of the same paper, lay the piece of paper under your ''blooper'' and cut around the mistake you want to get rid of, through both layers of paper. Don’t forget to work on a cutting mat otherwise you’ll end up with cuts through your sketchbook (or table!) and press hard because you need to get through two layers. This way you end up with a piece of paper that will fit exactly into the area you have cut out. 

You can see the headshaped hole in my sketch top right! Incidentally, this trick used to be used pre-photoshop to get rid of gurning faces or exes, just replace the face with a new one! Once you are finished, remove the ''blooper'' and insert your replacement piece which now fits perfectly into the in my case ''head hole'', piece of tape on the back, I used thin framing tape, and we're good to go! 

The proof of the pudding is in the tasting so the saying goes, taaadaaaa here is the result.......! You can barely see the faint cutting line, and when I've completely finished the face it will not be visible, good isn't it?  Unfortunately, his nose has gone pert again rather than Patrician, I'm afraid it’s staying that way!