Bleed-Through Picture-Making

This NEW Class Includes Lifetime Access, Online Community & More!

6 Lessons – $72

One thing leads to another and in Henrik Drescher’s world that means layering one process upon another to see where it goes. In this class, Henrik takes us from bookmaking with rice paper to animation to a single finished painting. Each step is both an end and a beginning… and all with his insight and anecdotes.

Now available as a self-study class.

TEACHER: Henrik Drescher

Class Description

Danish born artist and illustrator Henrik Drescher, has over 50 illustrated books to his name including The Boy Who Ate Around, a 1994 New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book. We are honored to host this class with him. He writes:

“Since an early age I’ve been an image scavenger. My mind has always been alert to image debris, keeping ideas and images in books, which then spill into my painting and illustration.”

In this class we will work in a handmade rice paper notebook, and the drawings will ‘bleed through’ from one page to the next. Your challenge is to create an animation based on the bleed-through pages. This can be seen as a primal spontaneous animation class or a way to create a series of pages based on the idea of the bleed-through process. Once your book is filled and your animation made, you will cut up portions of your book to make a larger picture.

By the end of this class you will have….

A 20-PAGE BOOK….

AN ANIMATION…

AND A COLLAGE!

Class Itinerary

Week 1
Lesson 1 – Bind Your Notebook
You will learn to make a double-signature rice paper booklet, for this lesson you can start by making a 20-page booklet but for future books, this process can bind as many as 40 pages.

Lesson 2 – Start Drawing
Start your drawing, keep the first images simple; a head, a hand, a house…a slice of toast, whatever makes you happy, notice the bleed-through marks on the following page, use the bleed-through to start your next drawing, slightly changing it from the previous drawing… think of it as a frame in an animation sequence which is what it is.

Lesson 3 – Introduce Color
Continue the bleed-through process, but introduce color using alcohol-based markers, work with the colors as an abstract element in your Morpholio animation.

Week 2
Lesson 4 – Bring Story to a Close
Bring the story to a close. Trace the first drawing and draw the exact same drawing on your last page, then work the drawings towards the end page, morphing the shapes and color so it seamlessly blends into the final image. You can go back and ‘focus’ the earlier drawings at this point…use a piece of paper to block further bleed through though, work with the color, work with the line.

Lesson 5 Animate!
This is where you animate the drawings in a low-tech way. Download the iOS or Android iMotion app (no need to purchase it). Use the ‘onion skin’ function to align your photos and export to your photo library. The format with be .gif which when uploaded to a web page runs like an endlessly cycling animation.

Lesson 6 – Picture-Making
Cut up (cannibalize) your book to make larger pictures, don’t be precious about your work… use it! Evolve/involve yourselves in the process of creating.

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Full Supply List

• Rice paper (uncoated), several sheets (enough to make a 20-page book of about 7″x7″)

​Henrik provided this link:

​MEGREX Chinese Japanese Calligraphy Practice Writing Sumi Drawing Xuan Rice Paper (100 sheets), 13″ x 27″, 19.99

The size of book you make is up to you… Basically if you do a 6.5″x6.5″ book kind of like Henrik you will need 10 sheets of 6.5″x13″ for a 20 page book and 20 sheets for a 40-page book. Henrik demonstrates a 20-page for the class but encourages you to make it longer if you can.

• thicker cover paper such as Strathmore or Canson Mi-Teintes
• Alcohol-based markers such as Sharpies, Staedler Lumicolor or Copics
• Large needle
• Waxed bookbinders thread (or any thread that you like)
• X-Acto type knife
• Cutting Mat
• Glue stick
• White glue such as Jade or Elmers (or matte medium)
• Large sheet of paper to make a big picture at the end (I like Arches hot press)

• optional: Squiggle Wiggle Writer Toy (for a fun drawing tool)

Henrik Drescher was born in Denmark his family immigrated to the United States when he was 13.

Henrik Drescher has published over 40 books, most of them for children.

His work encompasses the fields of illustration, children’s books, book-arts  and painting, his work is in the collections of the Getty museum, the Victoria and Albert museum, the museum of modern art and the library of congress which honored him with a retrospective exhibition.

He and his Hong Kong born wife currently divides their time between Brooklyn and Yunnan china.

website: www.hdrescher.com

bookshop: https://drescher.magcloud.com/

Nuts & Bolts

– The videos are pre-recorded and you have instant access upon signup.

– Private Facebook and Padlet groups will be available for you to (optionally) share your work and receive comments from the instructor and fellow students.

– You will have indefinite access to this class.

“THANK YOU HENRIK! You have the most brilliant imagination of any art teacher I've ever had the pleasure of learning from. ” — Karla H.
“Thank you for this class Henrik--a multi-layered approach to staying loose, having fun, and building on creative ideas in unexpected ways.” — Lisa M.