Video: Cutting Out Paper for a Still Life Drawing

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How to cut-down the paper so you have a manageable work area for drawing your still life; learn tips, tricks and more for creating great still life drawings in this free online art lesson on video taught by David A. Clemen.

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Video Transcript

Now that I've drawn the size of paper that I want to use, I like to get this paper just to where I can just work with this paper. So, basically, I'm going to use this razor blade knife and this metal ruler which you can see it has a cork on the bottom of it which actually gives it space from the paper. And one thing that it's good for is if you're, especially if you're using ink pens or markers, you've probably noticed when you do a line on a ruler that's flat to the paper, it smears. That little bit of space will prevent the marker from smearing the edge of the border that you're doing. But in this case, I'm going to use it for cutting out the paper. So I'm going to line it up on my outside edge. And be very careful when you're using these knives because they don't play around. They're very sharp. So once I get it to where I want it, and I'm just going to set the blade at the corner and I'm going to slowly put pressure, and just drag it down while I'm holding the ruler in place to keep a nice straight line. Then I'll come over here and for me, personally, I like to pull the blade towards me but slowly, because you don't want to.... There's no rush when you're using this blade. That's the key point I'm trying to make. And I'll just do the same thing, I just set the ruler to the right. Set the blade in the corner. Slowly drag. And you may have to score it a couple of times because it's a thicker paper so it didn't separate. So what I'll do is repeat the process. Which on this paper it usually takes two. Two scores. Turn this back. Then you can see that it separated on the second score. Do the same thing on the long side. And this one's going to be feisty and I'm going to have to do a third one. And this is being really feisty. There we go. So now this is the actual piece that I'm going to use. So I'm going to set that there. This drawing table actually has a cutting mat that I bought and put that on there to fit to size so it's like self healing. You can get that at your art store as well.

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Cutting Out Paper for a Still Life Drawing

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