LifeBook Week 22: Drawing in a grid

This week on LifeBook we had a lesson from Kristin Dudish, who showed us a fun way to draw in a grid. I've heard of this method before, but never tried it. The idea is to cut your reference photo into squares, number them in order and then draw a corresponding grid on your substrate. Then you just draw what you see in each square one-by-one, gradually building up your picture. Kristin suggested that we randomly choose the pieces to make it more interesting.

She also gave us the option to use different supplies for each square to build a colourful patchwork in the process. I chose to use only graphite pencils to start with because I wanted to try drawing a more realistic portrait to see if this method really works. Later on I might try the colourful patchwork technique as well. I think this is the first time EVER I managed to make my drawing remotely resemble my reference subject!

I chose a photo of my son that had I converted to black and white so I can concentrate on the shadows and highlights more. It's not perfect by any means, but I think it very much resembles the original photo. It's probably because with the grid method you get the proportions perfectly right, which is something I always struggle with when drawing freehand. It was interesting to see how the picture developed square by square. I now regret not having taken photos of the in-between stages to show you.

Thanks for visiting! 

Have a lovely bank holiday weekend!