Experimentation: UV Drawing from Photographs

Whilst I was waiting for a computer to become available so I could print photos to write on, I decided to draw out one of the photos. I chose one of my Grandad as a young lad because he looked like a cheeky kind of character in his day. It wasn't until I'd stared at the photo for a good while before I realised how my youngest cousin is almost the spitting image of my Grandad, it's weirdly eerie but it just shows how genetics are passed down.

I initially started drawing in UV pen with a light but quickly found this didn't give the best or most technical drawing as I couldn't properly see what I'd previously drawn, this meant I the features became wonky and distorted. I then sketched it out in pencil on a different piece of fabric and drew over the piece in the UV pen. This meant the drawing was more detailed and truer to the original source, the features didn't distort as they had previously. The sketch is a little shaky and I'm definitely out of practice, but hopefully my drawing skill will improve as I continue to pursue this angle of my project. Once I'd drawn over it in the UV pen, I tried to rub out the pencil it sort of rubbed into the invisible ink and essentially bonded itself to the fabric. Though it looks quite nice, having a visible image does defeat the purpose of the UV pen, so I wouldn't be able to use pencil to initially sketch out the drawing.

After this realisation, I started brainstorming ways around it. I could just draw over the photos but I wanted to actually draw out what I saw as it would be more personal and I want this project to be quite personal. I think maybe projecting the photo onto the fabric and then drawing it would work but I'd have to trial it to be sure. I do really like the effect of the UV even if it makes a kind of inverted image and think different portraits would look effective once lined up along a wall.

I then talked to my tutor about my progress and she liked the idea and suggested maybe doing a kind of 'before and after' situation where I draw an old picture of a relative and then over the top in either UV or pencil a recent picture of the same relative. This would mark the passage of change a little more and would give some kind of context to the image. I think it might work quite well and I'm psyched to try it out.

Second drawing under ultraviolet and natural light.

Initial drawing.

Photograph of my Grandad the sketches were drawn from.