Grid Drawing

Chapter I - About Drawing Grids

In this chapter:

why using grids makes people uneasy

famous artists who used these tools

Leon Battista Alberti and the idea of pictures being thought of as windows

Alberti's idea of using windows to draw

what's a picture plane?

Albrecht Dürer and his draughtsman's net

A plate from Jean Dubreuil's 17th century manual, Practical Perspective Necessary to All Painters; here, an artist's glass is in use 

Grids make people uneasy. The student, the seasoned artist too, most often looks over her shoulder before starting to stealthily draw the lines on their canvas for a grid. Why? Because it makes it so much faster and easier to draw an image properly that it feels like, well, cheating.

Allow me to set your mind at rest. There is absolutely no doubt that artists of a stature like that of Vermeer, da Vinci, Dürer and Van Gogh employed drawing grids for their drawings and paintings, and if they could do it, well we can too, especially when you first start to learn how to draw. The important thing is to keep drawing grids in their place; they should be a tool, not a crutch. Don't forget to practice drawing without perspective groups, to develop your eyes’ accuracy.

Let's take a brief look at where the idea of using drawing grids began; it is useful for understanding how they work.