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One day early in my first semester of art school we were given a wire grid on a stand. We were instructed to stand this on the desk, between us and our paper. I had seen pictures of Albrecht Durer famously using a grid or a window to help him capture the perspective of an object and assumed that we were doing the same. We were then told to draw a grid onto our paper, but not a uniform one. The lines should be different distances apart to create distortions in the grid. Once our grids were complete, then we could start drawing.
If you have ever used a grid to copy or enlarge an image, you may be familiar with the technique of focusing on one small square at a time to build up a larger picture. (I used it a lot in the ‘old days’ before scanners and digital art software. Actually, I still use it sometimes as my art practice is very low-tech.) On this particular day in drawing class we were building up a picture of what was in front of us and then transforming it according to the variations in our grids. We were being asked to simultaneously look carefully at the object before us and reconfigure its form onto paper, but a piece of drawing paper that may be buckling and swelling with irregular gridlines. An exercise in metacognitive drawing, if you will.
The practice of drawing is a wonderful tool for helping you see the world around you with an analytical eye. ‘How to draw’ books often give advice about looking for shapes within an object. For…
