About Draw-N-Paint Artist Drawing Grid Patterns

Drawing Grids and How to Use Draw-N-Paint's

Using grid drawing patterns is a way to take baby artist steps until your able to stand, walk and then run with art techniques you've mastered on your own. To help you in using Draw-N-Paint's Grid Patterns I'll explain some of the features.

Draw-N-Paints grids are designed to be simple and easy to use. Grid drawing patterns on Draw-N-Paint are made up of a matrix of half inch squares. Depending on your transfer surface you can enlarge or reduce the image to the desired size you would like for your artwork creation. You can even transfer the image to large wall for a design you may have in mind.

On portrait style grid patterns there are thirteen horizontal squares and seventeen vertical squares. This makes up a total of two hundred and twenty one squares that maybe utilized on any grid drawing pattern. Horizontal or rows use numerical digits and the vertical or columns use alphabetical characters in descending order. All grid drawing patterns are designed to print on an eight and a half by eleven inch sheet of paper.

Transferring Your Grid Pattern Image

First you need to think about the size or the ratio you want your drawn image to be. If you want to make your grid image larger you can increase the size of the grid pattern squares. Reverse things and by decreasing the size of grid patterns squares you can make the overall image smaller.

Probably the best question to ask ourselves is what size canvas are we going to use or what size would we like the image to be in our composition? Let's say our canvas is eighteen inches high and ten inches wide and your grid image is seventeen squares high. Divide eighteen by the number of seventeen squares high of your grid image. ( 18 ÷ 17 = 1.05 ) This size square of 1.05 inches is what we need to draw our grid pattern on our canvas to create a full size image.

Where to Begin Drawing Your Image from Grid Pattern

Where ever you feel comfortable to start transferring your image onto a blank grid pattern is up to you. It doesn't really matter in which square you begin drawing. What does matter is that you continue drawing in the adjacent square to the one you just previously drew in. If you skip to different squares you may find yourself using an eraser and redrawing to keep your image appearing jagged.

Are You Learning to See?

As you draw in each individual square ask yourself if you are seeing where the pencil images are in relation to the sides of the grid pattern. You should be seeing the distance between the pencil images and the grid pattern itself. It takes time to train your eye to see distance properly so practice, practice and practice. By doing so you will find your drawing skills becoming accomplished and your drawings looking more realistic.

At times blank white areas in art is referred to as negative space. This is because we can not identify what that space represents. Negative space is therefore nothing that we can draw because we do not know what it is or it does not really exist. An easy way to understand this is by looking at the following three squares below. Ask yourself, in what location do the smiley faces appear in each of their respective squares?

In the first square the smiley face is located at top left. The second square has the smiley face located at bottom middle and the last square has the smiley face located directly in the middle. In your mind you have just discerned the distance the smiley faces are in relation to the border lines of each separate square or the grid pattern. This is what is known as being able to see and understand negative space.

To illustrate this thought about negative space let's use a wooden chair as an example. If asked to draw a wooden chair how would we sketch it? By focusing on the negative space we do not identify with the individual pieces of the chair like the back rest, the chair legs or the chair seat. We can tell if our focus is on the wrong area because our drawings may look like stick figures such as the chair image below to the left.

What we need to focus on when drawing is the negative space that is between the different components such as the legs or the back rest of the chair. Actually what it is that we are drawing are the edges of each piece of the chair. We're still drawing the chair but in a way that we do not know it is a chair. Over time by applying this technique and with practice you will find you can learn to draw more realistically like the drawn chair to the right.

It is this concept to keep in mind when using Draw-N-Paint's grid drawing patterns. As you use them think of where the distance of the image lines your drawing are in relation to the grid itself. Remember grid drawing patterns are a way to begin to learn to see different sizes and shapes until your able to discern distance on your own. Eventually as you continue to practice your drawing skills your eyes and mind will gain ability to see negative space more clearly and drawing will be quite enjoyable.