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Start Art 8 54 www.painters-online.co.uk BASIC DRAWING The grid method of drawing I have acetate overlays with the grid on them made at the copy shop. It is then easy to take whatever size grid you need and tape it over any photo you want to paint.You can even number the individual boxes to help you keep track as you draw. Why drawing is important To be a good painter, it is essential to learn some basic drawing skills.All paintings must have a firm foundation to build on, and the shapes of the objects you are painting must be accurate. I take my own photo references to use in creating my artwork.To accurately depict what I want to paint, it is important to draw the shapes accurately in the beginning, before I start to paint. How the grid method works When I teach drawing to my students, I introduce them to the grid method of capturing shapes. It is an excellent method for breaking down a complex subject into smaller, more manageable shapes. 1. Place a grid of squares over a photo reference. One-inch squares usually work well. If you have many small details to capture, you can place smaller squares over your photo.This will break the subject matter down into more manageable pieces. 2. Draw an identical grid on your canvas. The squares can be the same size, larger or smaller, but the grid on your canvas must have the same number of rows and columns as the one on the reference photo. 3. Lightly draw what you see within each square. This makes it easy to get the shapes right. Demonstration: Peaches and teapot I like to play colours off of each other. In this piece, the colours of the peaches enhance the colour of the teapot.This is because red and green are opposites on the colour wheel, and placing them side by side always creates a good colour contrast.You can see another complementary colour scheme in use here as well.The colours blue and orange are opposites, so the sky colour helps illuminate the orange colours of the peaches and the orange colours reflected on the tabletop. This is a good project for practising your stroke work. This painting was mostly done with the No. 3 filbert brush and long fill-in strokes.When painting in long strokes, it is important to follow the contours of the object you are painting. In this example, curved strokes create the roundness of the teapot, straight strokes create the flat surface of the table and horizontal strokes give the illusion of a sky in the background. When using this approach, remember this important key: Everything you draw or paint should be viewed as a puzzle. And all of the pieces of the puzzle are nothing more than patterns of interlocking shapes of light and dark A graphed photo The graph will help you draw this still-life scene.