Refinement of my final compositions

Creating the compositions for my Etchings

For creating the compositions of my etchings I create the actual image by looking at a series of different references, some of them being my own hands and others being more photographic. My drawing is at it's best when it's at it's initial exploratory, inquisitive, light hearted and just-testing-so-I-don't-have-to-worry stage (sounds like I'm being far too complimentary about my drawing, I also currently incapable of finding a shorter way to describe it.) So to keep it at that stage I like to draw my compositions nearly for the first time on the actual plate. So far I would say that yes it doesn't get the best drawings ever, but I'm not sure of if be capable of them anyway, and it does give my images a certain natural quality and expressive charm that cannot be manufactured or gained through over drawing the drawing (for these sort of line drawings of mine at least.)

I would say that this approach is very true of the way I went about creating my animations, hence why I am tagging that brief in this post - and would say that this realisation is a development (and hopefully small improvement!) in the way I 'competently' create images! (Relavance of the visual journal!)

I use little scraps of appear and especially tracing paper to layout and test out compositions for creating my etchings:

Here are my final proposed tests for Printed Pictures, neatly presented and documented to see them at their best: