Blades for fine hair scratching

M

Madbrush

Guest
This is nothing special and I have mentioned it in another thread but I thought I would put it here because it's very handy to know, although I'm sure others do this too, I've never seen it mentioned.

Anyway, I had so much fun doing the hair on my Jessica painting and the success of that has moved me to share how that was possible.

I used the Zwaan-Morton No, 10 blade, that's this one;

No. 10 blade.jpg

Whilst I'm sure everyone has and uses these, it's not so much the blade that is important as what I did with it, firstly I used old blades that literally did nothing more, but, I dragged the tip of the blade along a piece of 600 wet & dry (dry of course) sand paper, I do this with the blade leaning flat at roughly a 30 degree angle and dragging always in one direction, what's important here is if you do that the blade works only in one direction, so I did two blades one dragged to the left and one dragged to the right, this mean I can scrape in the backhand as well as forehand.

Doing this allows your blade to slice easily through the paint, even if the paint is days old, because there is so little pressure required for it to do what it does, there is less chance of it damaging the paper, how it works is that after dragging it the other side of it acquires tiny microscopic hooks which can't be seen with the naked eye, but it's these hooks that do the cutting.

Using this system will allow you to achieve super fine lines without having to change to another blade type, all the fine fly away hairs on my Jessica painting are done with this with unbelievable ease.

Give it a try and let me know how you get on, and remember because this works on old blades as well as new, you'll be forking out for new blades a lot less frequently.
 
Thanks for the tip Madman. I have used a similar blade to scrape, but had issues with it, as you obviously noticed. I think I used the top side more because it worked and even then it only worked one direction. I'll have to get more blades and try this.
 
Thanks for the tip Madman. I have used a similar blade to scrape, but had issues with it, as you obviously noticed. I think I used the top side more because it worked and even then it only worked one direction. I'll have to get more blades and try this.

It's just as good with old blades, as you say I had issues with the blades too, I could only use the edge of the blade before this and the lines were way too thick, now I can use the point for super fine lines.
 
Only thing I can say about the made in England blades it that they seem to not hold the edge as well as the ones I use here at work from Germany and Japan. Granted here at work money is no object so paying 5 bucks a blade that last for a full year is cheap since After the live out their work life here I can take them home and use them for another year for scratching..LOL
I use the 10 , 15 , 20 and 45 each have a different curve or angle to them and can give different effects when scratching.
60 and 80 grit sand paper also works great for hair but keep a light touch or else you will ruin the painting.
 
Great tip Malky, I've just given it a go and it works!! :thumbsup: Cheers.
I don't have 600grit at home so I use 280 and then 1000grit. I'll get some 600 grit tomorrow :D
 
Great tip Malky, I've just given it a go and it works!! :thumbsup: Cheers.
I don't have 600grit at home so I use 280 and then 1000grit. I'll get some 600 grit tomorrow :D

Excellent, it doesn't matter too much about the grit, I used that because it's what I had, I've also used 180 in the past and it works just as good, obviously the point isn't to polish it but to rough it up a little, but it's incredible the difference it makes scratching on paper.
 
Mr M ..I thought I was the only one to use sandpaper to do scratching ,It works well scratching feather detail too!:thumbsup::thumbsup:

I don't use the sand paper for scratching, I just use it to shape the blade, I tried scratching with sandpaper once an dneded up with a nice clean canvas to start new on, lol
 
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