Gathering Reference Material
A typical wood engraving, or a scratchboard drawing drawn to look like a wood engraving, uses evenly spaced parallel lines to create the illusion of shading–the lines get thinner in light areas and thicker in dark areas. A critical issue that had to be worked out before starting the finished renderings of the monk that were to be viewed on TV was how tight the line count (line count is the number of lines per inch) should be. The line count should be high enough so that the illustration has adequate detail, but low enough so that the line work is obvious when viewed on TV.

To help work out the correct line count, Darren emailed me some images of what the line spacing should be. He also saw a portrait of George Washington on my web site that I had done for an Altoids ad, and he thought the size and line spacing of that piece would work perfectly. Being able to use my own illustration of George Washington as a guide for the correct line spacing made the task of figuring out the correct line count much easier. All I had to do was draw the monk at the same size and with the same line spacing as the Washington piece.

Note:
I kept the original drawing of Washington nearby while doing the final rendering and referred to it often to make sure the line spacing stayed on target.

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