A Whisper Line…

What is a WHISPER LINE?

Over the years I have found that there are two things that frustrate new artists the most. One is when the drawing materials are poor & difficult to use, and the other is that the lines used for guide while drawing sometimes do not erase easily.

Here are some helps:

1. Buy the best supplies that you are able to (we’ll talk more next time about this).
2. Use a WHISPER LINE when you start most drawings.

So, what is the WHISPER LINE: it is the line that only you can see. It is erasable. When you need to use guide-lines to draw along…these guide-lines should be made with a WHISPER LINE.

Here are some simple directions to help you understand:

On a piece of paper draw three lines: (see example below)

1. Make the first one a strong heavy line (push on paper)
2. The second one should be very light…barely touching the paper..a line only you can see.
3. The third one is a line somewhere in between.

Then take your eraser and try to cleanly erase the middle of the lines (again, see example above).  Which line do you think erases better? There are some lines that you are just going to have to erase and the middle line erases the cleanest.

We’ll call that line a WHISPER LINE, and just for starting out we’ll use this in each drawing.

-Rose