#drawingexercise2

Material exploration: Erasers

One of the drawing tools you have at your disposal is your eraser. It can be used to make a mark in reverse by removing lines or areas, a mark that can be as important as more obvious marks made with pencils or other tools.

There are a variety of erasers available to artists. We we will be using 3 types of erasers in this class.

The Gum Eraser is made of soft, coarse rubber and is excellent for erasing larger areas because it will not damage the paper. However, with gum erasers, they crumble while erasing and their residue has to be removed.

The Kneaded Eraser is great to remove graphite from a surface by absorbing it. It does not leave behind eraser residue like a gum eraser, and because of that, it lasts longer.  Kneaded erasers can be shaped like clay with your fingers to create a fine point for erasing small details, it can be shaped into a larger surface and work as a stamp, and it can work as a blotter to lighten a darker area covered with graphite. However, they don’t work as well for removing large areas because they deform while rubbing.

The white Plastic Eraser is perfect for precision erasing because they do a great clean erase and can smear large areas. They are used on technical drawings where they clean better than standard erasers do.

Take some time today to test out your erasers. An eraser is perhaps not the most obvious drawing tool, but it can be used very effectively to remove graphite, colored pencil, charcoal and even soft pastel to create light areas and highlights.

Using a single sheet of paper, make a variety of marks with pencil and any other materials you might have on hand that can be erased (charcoal, colored pencils, soft pastels...). Use the idea of a reverse drawing to better understand the particular qualities of each of your erasers. Try to think of the eraser as another way to make a mark through the removal of material. 

Post an image of your eraser research aka Drawing Exercise #2 onto your blog.

Images from top:

a photo of different types of erasers