Outline Drawing Using Grids to Better Visualizing

Whether you are a watercolorist creating portraits, pet portraits, landscapes and seascapes you need to start with a drawing. What a great way to utilize visualization while drawing is to use a grid. How hard is it to see all the detail lines, the small shadows and curves that make up a drawing. Famous masters like, Albrect Durer, Leonardo DaVinci and Michelangelo used grids to help them capture accurate details in their drawings.

When drawing you need to concentrate on the lines not the whole of the picture you are drawing. You can do this with anything that you would like to draw, maybe a picture in a magazine or an old photo you have and with digital cameras you could take any photo and turn it into an outline drawing. Let’s use your hand as an example of a drawing you would like to do. Take a photo of your hand, now you want to do a black and white rendering of that photo. Are you looking at the photo of your hand wondering were to begin. Now comes the easy part. Let’s draw it using a grid.

A grid can be of any size, or run in any direction, as long as it is made up of equal size spaces. When drawing a grid the best way is to have the grid made up of squares not rectangles. Take the photo and draw a grid over the top of the image of your hand, make sure that the squares are of equal size. Now on your drawing paper, draw another grid using the same number of grid squares that you have drawn over you photo of our hand. Make sure that you lightly draw the grid lines, allowing you to erase the lines when you have completed the drawing. The grid squares can be larger to create a larger scale of our hand or the squares can smaller then the original grid you drew over your photo. You must make sure the squares are equal in size.

As you start to recreate the photo by drawing it you need to focus on one square at a time. Reproducing the lines in the square you are working on. Make sure that the proportions, the lines, markings and the positioning of the lines and markings are the same as the grid on the photo. Focusing on only one square at a time you can define the details in your subject that you may have noticed with out the benefit of using a grid. The grid is allowing you to break down the subject into more visual and smaller portions, allowing you to capture a more accurate drawing then if you were free handing the drawing. If you have an area that is more detailed, you can subdivide the squares into several smaller reference lines, squares and/or triangles to allow you to see, visualize and draw the detailed area.

When you are sketching in each square of the subject, you need to draw lightly, so you can make corrections easily. When you have completed your sketch of the photo of your hand or another subject and you have it looking very realistic with details, shadows and definitions, you can go back over the correct lines to darken the subject.

Using a grid helps you train your eye to see what is really there.

Let’s review the use of the grid technique:

• It is simple and you will capture more detail when drawing complex subjects
• Grid can be of any size, run in any direction, but needs to be made up of equal size spaces and squares are usually the best to work with
• Use the same number of grid squares on our drawing paper as you have drawn over you subject
• Only draw one square at a time
• You can start our drawing by using any square
• Lightly draw so you can make corrections easily
• For detailed areas, subdivide one square into several smaller squares and/or triangles as grid reference lines

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