Drawing Scale: Easy ways to give your pieces some weight

Now when I think of drawing scale I don't really think of drawing 1 ,2 & 3 point perspectives. I think of blowing things up, to size that is. I never really was too big on drawing perspectives because mostly they involved drawing buildings and machines and such. The drawings just seem very mechanical. That's fine and it certainly has it place. I'm not saying I never use perspective techniques, but what this lesson will be about is tips and techniques for making things bigger and smaller.

There are many different techniques you can use when transferring a drawing or sketch to a bigger or smaller medium.

The Grid

Perhaps the easiest one for me is drawing a grid. I was introduced to this technique while studying Chuck Close, a famous hyper-realism artist. If you haven't seen any of his work I would defiantly suggest you check him out. It is a very straight forward technique and it works very well for transferring drawings to a bigger scale.

All you do is draw a grid on top of your current picture and then multiply the size of the squares by how big you want to enlarge your picture. Then all you have to do is draw the grid on the bigger paper.

Obviously having a bigger ruler will help transfer your grid. A yard stick is ideal depending on how big you are going. When drawing the initial grid you don't want to actually draw the grid on your work. Drawing the grid on tracing paper or even better transparency paper is great for this. It takes the worry and risk of ruining your initial drawing and allows you to customize and reuse the grid should have another project. You can buy it in a roll for relatively cheap.

Projector

The second best method that I know of is using a projector. I used this method in high school with an overhead projector. It worked great however those projectors are not cheap and not very practical for home use. There are some you can get for relatively cheap however the cheaper you go generally the smaller the image you will be able to project. The only problem with drawing scale with this method is that the picture you are projecting tends to bend around the edges due to the curvature of lens leaving you with a slightly skewed projection if you don't adjust accordingly.

Dürer Grid

You can also use your pencil for getting proportions and drawing scale. Just stretch your arm out with your pencil in hand. Close one eye and visually measure with your eye the size of what you're drawing against your pencil. The tips are easiest to measure from. This method is a little harder to get used to and works best with distant objects.

Drawing scale and proportions isn't that hard especially when you have such an array of options to work with. The projector is probably the easiest and some may say you are "cheating" if you use it, but even if you do use it you still have to fill in the outline you just projected.

It will however hamper you're progress on drawing things freehand if you rely on it too much. The grid methods are probably your best bet for improving your skills quickly as they force you to train your visual eye to see.