Ever Try a Scribble Grid?

something for you artists out there

Just popping in quickly to show you my first time trying a very cool technique: The Scribble Grid. As I understand it, these are widely used by mural artists, but I see they can be very valuable in figurative or still life work as well. Landscapes too, no doubt; I just haven’t tried that.

So here’s how it works:

Take a photo of the image you want to paint or draw.

Make an overall scribble on the paper or canvas. Make marks, use symbols, write words, whatever, then take a photo of that.

Moving to the digital portion now, I import my subject photo to Procreate on my iPad, then add the scribble grid as another layer.

Lower the opacity of the scribble grid until you can see the subject image below.

Now, using the scribbles as reference points, draw the subject on your canvas or paper on top of the scribbles.

The scribbles can be incorporated into your painting, or erased, depending on what you used to make them. I used charcoal and will be incorporating it into my painting.

I painted for an hour or so thus far, so, long way to go. But such fun!

I definitely got a better likeness than I would have without the reference points. Like many people, I tend to make the eyes too large and the forehead too short. And I also make my nose too big in self-portraits because I have a distorted body/face image in my head.

Here’s a little video start to finish:

Go try it! Let me know how it works for you!