Hello - I'm Alice and I'm a
research and documentation assistant at
Hull and East Riding Museum working with our
archaeology collections and today we've
got a bit of a craft for you. So we're
going to be looking at one-to-one scale
drawing which is a technique that
archaeologists use to record their finds.
So what you're going to need today is a
pencil, a ruler, an eraser - for if you make
any mistakes - and of course piece of
paper. You could use plain paper like
I've got or if you've got squared paper
or graph paper that might help you a
little bit more, so whatever you have
available. You're also going to need to
find a nice object to draw. So this
is something I got on holiday. It's a
replica of a Venus figurine from the
Neolithic period in Orkney - so I'm
gonna have a go at drawing this today. So
the first thing you want to do - get your
piece of paper, pop your object down - lie
it flat - and then you want to use your
pencil to dot around the object to
create your outline. Now make sure you
don't hold your pencil so it's slanting
underneath because we want to have this
as an accurate measurement of the actual
object so it needs to be as vertical as
you can get it. So you hold on to the
object tight and then dot down, dot, dot
round you go and now I'm going to show
you one that I've done earlier just to
speed things up. So then you'll have your
dotted outline. Now it's probably a
little bit faint for you to see here but
I promise you it's here, going all the
way around the edge and the next thing
we do is create that outline so we want
to join up all those dots. So start
drawing round and again here you can see
here's one that I did earlier... so
hopefully by now you've got a nice
outline of your objects and as you can
see I've got mine here. So the next thing
is we want to start adding in some of
those details. So this is an exact
one-to-one scale drawing
so it's exactly the same size and shape
as my object and you can see here we've
got some little details on so you can
particularly see these two circles on
the front of the object so I'm gonna
try and mark those on. So what you want
to do is have a look at your object, see
the feature you wanna mark so this
circle here and then you need to measure
to a fixed point on the object so we
need to measure it down to the top of
the circle that's four millimeters down
and then we measure in from the side
that's five millimeters across from the
side edge so then I go four millimeters
down make a small mark and then five
millimeters from the edge make another
small mark and then you do that for each
of the different parts - so wherever
the line on the object changes
direction you want to be making a little
dot so again you can connect all of
those dots up so you have a go and I'll
have a show of what I did earlier so
here you go you get end up with this...
again it might be a little bit faint for
you to see on the piece of paper I have
here but I've now got those little four
dots to make a better circle I'm just
going to connect them up together so
here you can see I've connected them all
up together and then you continue doing
that for all of the different bits that
you can see on your object - all the
little bits - and again you can then start
to use shading so if you want you could
just make it a little bit darker to
indicate that change so you can show
that it's an indented thing so again
just showing you that objects you can
see that it's a little bit indented in
and you just want to show those
different changes in your drawing. So you
keep going and if you do finish your
drawing, please do send us copies of them. We'd love to see what you've done so
tag us in either on Facebook, Twitter or
Instagram and as you can see from my
final drawing from doing things like
on the scale drawing you really look at
those objects a bit more carefully and
you start to notice things that you
maybe wouldn't have noticed if you've
taken a photograph. Like with this
object - you know - initially you just see
those two big circles which were clearly
marked and meant to be there but then
when you look more closely and you see
on my drawing there are all of these
other lines that were made from
when the person actually made it and
carved the object and they're things
that you probably wouldn't have focused
on quite so much in a photograph so
hopefully you've enjoyed doing this
activity and you'll come back and see us
soon
