Favorite Tool: Eraser

Pen and ink is a great medium. I love the precision of fine lines, of cross-hatching for shading. In a journal, pen and ink looks both artistic and scholarly. Pen and ink with watercolor pencil washes make me happy.

When I draw with pen and ink, I start with pencil.  Because I need to erase a lot.

My favorite eraser–clean, neat, won’t shred your paper.

Most pen and ink classes I’ve taken talk about blending in your mistakes, or keeping the drawing “loose.” With a pencil, you can move from rough sketch to inking by using a pencil and eraser first, learning as you go along.  Try something, erase it, fix it, change it, re-do it. My must-have, go-to tool is an eraser.

When I teach, I see people frown and say, “I made a mistake,” which baffles me. Of course you make mistakes, you are experimenting,  trying ideas until you get to what you want. That’s not a mistake, it’s working toward an goal. It’s creation. And that works if you are writing, dancing, or singing. I might add that there is so far no eraser for dancing or singing.

Old school eraser looks like modern delete key. Same function.

An eraser is handy when drawing packages with twine, vines, or anything with perspectives or that overlaps. Erasers are a tool that help you get to the final image. Stop thinking in terms of “mistake.”  Erasers help us complete the work we start, to capture the image we want.

Knowing about erasers means choosing the one that works for your art.

I’m a fan of white plastic erasers that don’t chew up the page and erase cleanly.

I love kneaded erasers because they keep my hands busy and pick up large areas of graphite really well. I also hate them because you can’t put them near anything plastic, or the eraser will melt the plastic. No idea why.

I love electric erasers that work on detail and are charming for fast work in

A house brush helps clean up without smearing.

reductive drawings.

Eraser get round and you need an edge? Slice the round part off with a craft knife and you have a new edge. They are inexpensive.

Tired of eraser dust? Buy a big paintbrush–housepainting size, and sweep the dust away. Don’t blow on your artwork, particularly not if you have been eating chocolate or drinking coffee. A stray spray of spit can mark the page.

Best of all, you can also carve up an eraser and make your own rubber stamps. So indulge in that extra eraser. You won’t regret it.

—Quinn McDonald loves erasers and the freedom of creative work they encourage.

Under the Mistake, Gold

“Sometimes it hits me that I’m wrong about most things. About time. About my place in space. About the nature of the body. About the nature of the divine. About human nature. About what death is. About who I am and who my kids are. And about what the creek needs to support the salmon and all its visitors.

But heavens, let’s not worry about being wrong! I’m gradually learning that, paradoxically, it’s the foolsgold–the blunderings, giving ups, breakdowns, in spite ofs, chance encounters, shatterings, letting gos, and mess-ups, that has led to most of the creativity in my life, not the sweet making of something beautiful, or “enlightened” inspiration, and certainly not feeling in control. It’s the opposites, listenings, buzz hums,  the falling (leaping) down the rabbit hole, the stepping through the looking glass, barefoot, with no suitcase, in new territory.”

–Susan G. Wooldridge, Foolsgold, p. 88.

Transformation. Tape, ink, stitching, © Quinn McDonald. All right reserved.

After reading that, I began to wonder why, when we notice we are wrong, we are so concerned with having been wrong, instead of eager to have the skill of discernment and a chance to practice problem solving.

What exciting, wonderful, practical or clever thing have you learned recently from making a mistake?

Here’s my list: I need seven hours of sleep, no matter how much I think I can get by on five or six.

Rushing in the studio is directly proportional to the project failing at the last moment.

Not walking in the morning means losing important incubation time for ideas.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach.

Eraser Power!

Pen and ink is a great medium. I love the precision of fine lines, of cross-hatching for shading. In a journal, pen and ink looks both artistic and scholarly. Pen and ink with watercolor pencil washes make me squee.

My favorite eraser, available at most art supply stores.

I’ve worked with pen and ink, but not the way most people do. I draw in pencil first. Yep, I do. Because I need to erase a lot. Most pen and ink classes I’ve taken talk about using just the barest hints and suggestions of lines. In my way of thinking, if you are using just the necessary lines that create an image (and the human eye can recognize an image if only 30 percent of it is there) I’ll need a pencil, because I’m going to sketch in big outlines first, and that’s not always what stays when I ink over the pencil.

Pencils are wonderful because they erase. And I love erasers. I’m not a natural illustrator, so I have to try something, erase it, fix it, change it, re-do it. So my must-have, go-to tool is an eraser.

Eraser as pun. Image from stylehive.com Eraser from Tersumus, about $8.00

When I teach, I see people frown and say, “I made a mistake,” which baffles me. Of course you make mistakes, art is about trying things over and over until you get to what you want. That’s not a mistake, it’s working toward an goal. It’s creation. I could insert my rant about scrapbooking kits here, that never allow you to make mistakes, just assemble pages, but I won’t. Even though I want to. No, I am staying on topic: erasers.

When I draw vines that wrap around a pole, I need an eraser. I draw the pole first, the vine next and I need to erase the intersection where they cross. I need an eraser for packages with twine, boxes in general, anything with perspectives or that overlaps. Erasers are a tool that help you get to the final image. We are ingrained to think erasers fix the bad stuff we do. Pfui. Erasers help us complete the work we start, to capture the image we want.

Erasers: Pink pearl and beige Art Gum on top, gray kneaded eraser on bottom.

Knowing about erasers means choosing the one that works for your art. I’m a fan of white plastic erasers that don’t chew up the page and erase cleanly. I love kneaded erasers because they keep my hands busy and pick up large areas of graphite really well. I also hate them because you can’t put them near anything plastic, or the eraser will melt the plastic. No idea why. I love electric erasers that work on detail and are charming for reductive drawings.

Eraser get round and you need an edge? Slice the round part off with a craft knife and you have a new edge. They are inexpensive enough to have several and they offer what I most want, as a non-illustrator: Hope.

–-Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach. Her book Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art will be published by North Light Books in July of 2011.

Mistakes: Face Them, Fix Them

This is not about spinning a mistake, hiding it, rationalizing it. This is much harder. This is about fixing it. The post is about fixing mistakes you make at work, but it works pretty well with

Big mistake eraser available at: http://www.comparestoreprices.co.uk

friends and family first.

Here’s the step-by-step to face and fix mistakes:

1. See the mistake. This sounds obvious, but the reason we make mistakes is because we don’t know what we are doing is going to result in a mistake. Often, when we notice a mistake, we immediately stop thinking about it, and focus on how to blame it on someone else. That’s the dangerous part. See the mistake for what it is–a slip up you made because you drew the wrong conclusion, thought something wrong was right, or raced ahead too fast. If you don’t know what you did wrong, there is no second step.

2. Acknowledge your mistake. First, acknowledge that this is your mistake and own it. You can’t fix it if you don’t own it. Take a look at the root cause of the mistake–was it sloppiness, overwork, the wrong process? Find how it went wrong and you’ll know why it went wrong.

3. Develop a solution. You know how and why the mistake happened, figure out a solution that solves it. You get to fix all your own mistakes. In fact, you are the only person who can do the best job. Because it was your mistake, you have more information than anyone else. This should take minutes, not days. The solution may have several steps that need to take place over days, but you have to have a reasonable fix.

4. Alert your boss first, team members second. Your boss needs to know about major mistakes before your team members. Smaller mistakes that your team members can fix in their normal workday can be fixed at that level. Going to your boss isn’t a fun task, which is exactly why you developed the solution before you left your office. If you go to your office, dump the problem on the boss’s desk, you will be creating a panic situation and you will be responsible for using the boss’s fix. Your answer, because you are closer to the problem, is going to work better.

5. Know how to prevent the mistake. Besides acknowledging responsibility and knowing how to fix the mistake, you have to know how to prevent it from happening again. If your mistake is an emergency, this step needs to happen after the emergency is over. Preventing mistakes is the part where overwork– too many projects to be completed in not enough time–comes in. You can point out that you are concentrating on too many priorities and ask your boss to prioritize your workload. If you think everything is the same level of importance, you are headed for trouble. And you’ll be wrong. Not everything is equally important. That’s the short answer that leads to a big failure. Whether you need training, better communication, more responsibility, more authority and less responsibility, this is the time to point it out in a clear, tactful way.

—Quinn McDonald is a life- and certified creativity coach who teaches business communication and raw-art journaling.

Wrong, Wrong, Wonderfully Wrong

“Sometimes it hits me that I’m wrong about most things. About time. About my place in space. About the nature of the body. About the nature of the divine. About human nature. About what death is. About who I am and who my kids are. And about what the creek needs to support the salmon and all its visitors.

But heavens, let’s not worry about being wrong! I’m gradually learning that, paradoxically, it’s the foolsgold–the blunderings, giving ups, breakdowns, in spite ofs, chance encounters, shatterings, letting gos, and mess-ups, that has led to most of the creativity in my life, not the sweet making of something beautiful, or “enlightened” inspiration, and certainly not feeling in control. It’s the opposites, listenings, buzz hums,  the falling (leaping) down the rabbit hole, the stepping through the looking glass, barefoot, with no suitcase, in new territory.”

–Susan G. Wooldridge, Foolsgold, p. 88.

After reading that, I began to wonder why it is that when we notice we are wrong, we are so concerned with having been wrong, instead of pleased and delighted in our ability to detect a mistake and fix or change it.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach.