I finished my Mantis

This is the weaving drawing I have been laboring over in Art class. This first black and white image is the rough draft. First thing is to draw the face or whatever. Next you draw contour lines over your drawing following the hills and valleys of the shapes of the face you are trying to portray. Once you have all those done you go back and erase lines to create the "woven effect" That is the tricky part. Keeping all those dang lines straight was amazingly difficult.

Once the lines are placed you trace using a light board onto a good piece of paper. The reason for not using the good piece of paper becomes pretty obvious once you have erased for the fiftieth time. You then fill in all the negative space using an ink pen. All the lines get outlined in pen as well. The last step is to shadow each of the woven cross pieces to give dimension.






This is the finished head and it turned out rather well if I do say so myself. I tried to outfox myself a little and did some weird weavings around the head. I also ran into a small spot where my end dropped off into nowhere so I sort of folded it back on itself.
















This is detail of the piece where you can see more of the way it was done. I have to say actually going through the whole process definitely gave me a better appreciation for the work the kids did and how quickly they got theirs done. Of course I started a couple weeks late and mine was more intricate than most. All in all it was fun and I rather like the result.

The actual piece is on a 16 x 26 inch piece of paper so is rather large. I might just have to frame it :)