After completing the cartoon for this painting, I transferred it to a canvas, as you can see in the photo. A cartoon, I remind you, is a drawing used as a template for a painting. Cartoons are made to the exact dimension of the target surface. Typically, they are used for large paintings and murals but are often used for small paintings with a lot of details, as in this painting, and watercolors or other surfaces (such as prints) where keeping a clean surface is important.
I used carbon paper to transfer the cartoon to the 30″ x 36″ canvas. The carbon sheets are 26″ x 48″, which make transferring even large cartoons manageable. The canvas has a smooth ground, which facilitates the process. If the surface is too rough, details get lost. I also prefer smooth surfaces. The tone is a mixture of raw umber and white. If the ground tone is too dark, the drawing is hard to see.
The last part of the preparation is fixing the drawing. Fixing means making the drawing permanent so it doesn’t get rubbed off as I work, and prevent the carbon from getting picked up in the paint and muddying it. I sometimes go over the outline with India ink and then wipe off the carbon before I start painting. But in this instance, I sprayed the surface with varnish.
The process might seem labor-intensive but it works well for me. By the end of the process, I’ve shed unnecessary details while preserving the important ones. There are eight figures in the, as yet, untitled painting.