How to use the Grid Method with a Drawing of Chuck Close as an Example

The Grid Method


Proportions are the way that different parts of a drawing relate to each other.
If you are drawing from a photograph, a way of making the proportions more accurate is to use the grid method.
The grid method is when you draw an image using a grid.
Artists use this method to help improve their drawing and observational skills.
In this video, I'm making a drawing using the grid method.

Draw out a grid on a piece of paper and draw the same grid over the image you want to reproduce.

On both the plain paper and the image I mark the left hand sides with letters and the tops with numbers. I do this so that I can identify the square I am drawing in.

The task is to draw the image square by square onto the paper. It's good to be methodical and start from the top left hand corner and work your way across and down so that your hand doesn't smudge your drawing.

I'm using the orange pieces of card to block out the other sections so that its clear which square I'm on.

Focus on one square at a time until the entire image has been transferred.
Focus on getting the placement of each line accurate. Where do the lines begin and where do they end? Also, pay attention to where the lines cross over into other squares.

By focusing on one square at a time, you end up drawing what you actually see, and not what you think you see.

The person that I'm drawing in this demonstration is Chuck Close.

Chuck Close is an artist who uses the grid method to make his paintings look photorealistic. Photorealistic means that his paintings look like photographs. Believe it or not, this image is not a photograph, its is a painting! Here it is with Alec Baldwin standing in front of it. As you can see, it's massive.

In this photograph he is painting his own face square by square. The advantage of this method is that he can focus on one square at a time rather than dealing with the whole face all at the same time.

He's in a wheel chair because when he was young he got an injury in his spine which made him paralysed from the neck down. Luckily, he got a little movement back in his arms so he strapped a paintbrush to his wrist and continued painting.



Anyway, once all the details have been drawn in the squares, take a look at the drawing as a whole and decide if you need to make any alterations.

Once the alterations have been made, the drawing is complete. And that is how you make a drawing using the grid method.