I had a nice life drawing in my sketchbook and decided to take it a stage further into a fully worked-up drawing and then, eventually, into a full-colour reduction monotype. I stretched a sheet of Bockingford 250gsm and gave it a couple of coats of rabbit skin glue, then washes of acrylic paint in yellow ochre, permanent rose and cerulean blue. That was the easy bit. When I rework a sketchbook piece, I don’t just scale it up, I adapt it to fit the shape of the monotype plate, correct any bad bits in the original and aim to get a lovely line, even if that means altering it.
I’m pretty happy with the linework on this new drawing; there’s a bit to do on the hands and hair still, and then I’ll start working in some highlights and tones into the body and darken the background. So far I’ve just used willow charcoal, but I’ll probably develop the piece now with compressed charcoal and white and transparent oil bars. I’ll do the monotype from a linear tracing, hopefully in the next couple of weeks. It’s taken me two half-days to get this far; I can’t keep it up for a full day because I stop being able to see it and need an overnight break to look at it afresh.
scribblah 
I just love your blog so I’ve nomonated you for the Sunshine Award. I said “Scribblah can scribble some great scribbles. I particularly like her life scribbles.”
The link is here: http://notestothemilkman.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/and-talking-of-awards/#comment-120
Lovely
Thank you
Pardon my ignorance but what are “transparent oil bars”? Are they like oil pastels?
Oil bars are oil paints in a fairly solid form, far more solid than oil pastels and there’s a transparent one [colourless lender] which is a sort of solidified stick of oil that you can use to draw over charcoal lines and it gives the most exquisite fluid line and also renders the charcoal permanent. They allow artists to draw with paint and are very good for artists like myself who don’t like using brushes. http://www.winsornewton.com/products/oil-colours/artists-oilbar/
http://www.studioarts.co.uk/links/hintsandtips/oilbar.htm
Thank you. I’ll check them out.
It’s always reassuring to me as an artist to know that somebody else besides me also needs an “overnight break” to be able to see what’s actually going on in a work in progress!
Titian used to do his underpainting then turn the canvas to the wall for 6 months before completing it, so we’re in good company 🙂