Tricks to keep your drawing correct - Gridding

Top Art Tip to keep your drawing correct and undistorted - Gridding.

1 1)    To keep proportions correct when working from a photo you can grid the photo and your drawing paper:

First make sure that your photo and drawing paper are in proportion with each other by checking that they share a diagonal - see below. 

Then where that diagonal crosses the edge of the paper, rule a line to remove any excess paper.

Your photo and your drawing paper are now in perfect proportion to each other - if not, your drawing would be distorted, as in a fairground mirror, too high or too wide!

 2) Top Art Tip:    A simple grid ( e.g for a landscape) would be to quarter the photo and to quarter your drawing paper. Then copy the shapes inside each quarter - larger of course, if your drawing paper is larger.

  You will have to guesstimate - is your drawing paper twice as big? half as big again? The shapes will also have to be twice as big, or half as big again.

 3) Top Art tip:    Where more accuracy is required, especially for an animal or a figure or face, draw more squares 

or better, grid a sheet of acetate using a permanent black overhead projection pen. The squares could be 2cm or even 1cm for a face.

Tape this over your photo. Now on your drawing paper, lightly rule squares the same size ( for a same size drawing), or 3cm or 4cm squares for a larger drawing.

Simply copy the contents of each square onto your drawing paper then rub out the grid lines.

Top Art tip: This has been done for centuries ( using black thread or wire in frames, not acetate sheets!) and should produce a perfect likeness if done with car