Grid Method vs Tracing vs Projector: Four Ways to Get a Picture onto Paper
There are four common ways to move a picture onto a drawing surface at the size you want: a grid, tracing, a projector, and a camera lucida. Each one teaches something, hides something, costs something and has a size range it is good for. The grid is one of the four, and this page says when one of the others is the better choice.
The Four at a Glance
| Method | What it teaches | What it hides | Cost | Size range | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grid | Seeing in relationships: where a line enters and leaves a square, how far along. Proportion. The habits transfer to freehand drawing. | Nothing about the placement; everything about value, edge and colour is still your decision. | A pencil and a ruler, or a printed grid. The reference can be a screen. | Any: a postcard, a wall. Scale is one number. | You want to learn to draw, or you need an enlargement with the proportions exact. |
| Tracing (lightbox, transfer paper) | Line quality, and the shape of a specific edge under the hand. | Proportion entirely: nothing is measured, so nothing is learned about measuring. | A window or a lightbox; carbon or graphite transfer paper for opaque surfaces. | Same size only, or the size of the print you can make. | The drawing has to match the reference exactly at the same size, and the drawing is not the point: an underdrawing for paint, a design for cutting. |
| Projector | Little, but it lets you see a composition at full size on the wall before committing. | Proportion, and its own distortion: a projector off the centre axis of the surface stretches the image, and the drawer traces the stretch faithfully. | The projector, a dark room, throw distance. Bump it and the alignment is gone. | Large: murals, backdrops, banners. | The surface is huge and time is short, and you snap a grid as well so the alignment can be recovered. |
| Camera lucida | Hand and eye together: the subject and the paper appear superimposed and the hand follows the eye in daylight. | Depth and structure. It records where edges appear, not why they are there, and the image swims if the head moves. | A prism on a stand. Practice: most people need a few sessions before the superimposed image holds still. | Small: a sketchbook page, a sheet on a table. | Drawing from life, not from a photograph, and wanting a quick accurate contour of a moving subject. |
The Grid
The grid divides the reference and the paper into the same number of squares and asks you to draw one square at a time. It is the only one of the four that changes the size of the drawing by arithmetic rather than by optics: a 2 cm cell on the picture drawn as a 6 cm cell on the paper is an enlargement of three, everywhere, with nothing stretched. It is also the only one that leaves you a habit. The questions it forces, where does this line enter the square and where does it leave, are the questions a trained eye asks without a grid, and after enough studies you ask them without the lines. It has been taught since Alberti described a squared veil in 1435, and Dürer drew the device in 1525, which is the subject of the grid method page.
Its cost is time. A 10 × 12 grid is 120 squares, each of which has to be looked at, and a drawing built square by square without a freehand pass afterwards comes out stiff. Its weakness is that it places and does nothing else; value, edge and colour are entirely yours, which is also why it is the one of the four that leaves you a better draughtsman.
Tracing
Tracing puts the reference under the paper on a window or a lightbox and follows the lines, or puts transfer paper between a print and an opaque surface and goes over the lines with a hard point. It is exact and fast, and it is the right tool whenever the drawing is not the point: an underdrawing that will be covered in paint, a pattern for cutting, a design to be repeated. Sign painters, muralists and printmakers trace, and have always traced.
What it hides is everything a grid teaches. Nothing is measured, so no sense of proportion is built, and a tracer who is asked to draw the same subject freehand has nothing to fall back on. It is also fixed at one size, the size of the print, so a tracing is an enlargement only if you can print the enlargement first. Use it when you already can draw, or when the result matters and the learning does not.
Projector
A projector throws the reference onto the surface at any size and you draw the light. For a wall, a backdrop or a banner it is the fastest way to a full-size outline, and it has one virtue nothing else has: you see the composition at full size before a mark is made, and can move it.
It has two problems, both optical. A projector that is not exactly on the centre axis of the surface, at right angles to it, stretches the image, and a drawer traces the stretch as faithfully as the picture; checking a projected outline against a measured grid is the only way to know. And it is fragile in time: bump the projector on the fourth day and the alignment is gone, while a grid snapped on the wall is still there in the third week. Muralists who project usually snap a coarse grid as well, for exactly that reason; the mural grid method post works through it.
Camera Lucida
The camera lucida is a prism on a stand, patented by William Hyde Wollaston in 1806. Looking down through the prism you see the subject and your own hand on the paper superimposed, in daylight, and you draw the subject where it appears. It was the sketching instrument of the nineteenth century and the tool that led William Henry Fox Talbot, frustrated by his own results with it, toward photography.
It is the only one of the four that works from life rather than from a flat reference, and for a quick accurate contour of a sitter or a building it is remarkable. What it hides is structure: it records where the edges of a form appear from one eye position, not why they are there, and the image drifts if the head moves, which is why it takes practice and why the drawings made with it are contours rather than constructions. It does not enlarge, and it does not work from a photograph.
Is Any of This Cheating?
The question is asked seriously and deserves a serious answer, which is: cheating at what? If the aim is a drawing, no method of getting it is cheating, any more than a ruler cheats at a straight line. Painters have used veils, frames, camera obscuras, lucidas and projectors for as long as those things have existed, and the treatises that founded European painting recommend them by name.
If the aim is to learn to draw, the question becomes a real one, and the answer is different for each of the four. Tracing and projecting teach almost nothing about proportion, because nothing is measured. The camera lucida teaches hand and eye but not structure. The grid teaches the measuring itself, and is the one whose habits survive when the tool is put away. So the honest rule is: use whatever gets the picture on the paper when the picture is the point, and use the grid when you are the point, and then take it away.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is using a grid to draw cheating?
- No. It is a measuring instrument, recommended to painters in the first treatise on painting in 1435, and it teaches exactly the seeing freehand drawing needs. The one honest caution is to take it away once the drawing is placed, so the habit of measuring moves from the paper into your eye.
- Is tracing better than the grid method?
- For a result at the same size when the drawing is not the point, yes: it is exact and fast. For learning to draw, no: nothing is measured, so no sense of proportion is built, and it cannot enlarge. Use tracing for underdrawings and patterns, the grid for learning and for enlargements.
- Projector or grid for a mural?
- Both. The projector shows the composition at full size before a mark is made and gets an outline up quickly. The grid stays on the wall after the projector is bumped and catches the stretch a projector adds when it is not exactly on the centre axis of the wall. Muralists who project usually snap a coarse grid as well.
- What is a camera lucida and does anyone still use one?
- A prism on a stand, patented in 1806, through which the subject and your hand on the paper appear superimposed in daylight. It works from life, not from a photograph, gives a quick accurate contour, and takes practice. They are still made and still used by sketchers and illustrators.
- Which method should a beginner use?
- The grid, with a coarse division and a simple subject, followed by the same subject drawn freehand. It is the only one of the four that leaves a habit behind: the questions it forces about where a line enters and leaves a square are the questions a trained eye asks without the lines.
Sources
- On Painting, Book Two, Leon Battista Alberti, 1435, translated by John R. Spencer. The squared veil recommended to painters as the most useful aid to drawing.
- Camera Lucida, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Wollaston's 1806 British patent for the instrument, and how it was used.
- Linear Perspective, Encyclopaedia Britannica. The optics a projector obeys and distorts when it stands off the centre axis of the surface.