An Artist’s Guide

An Artist’s Guide Gabriele Polizzi

We welcome our readers to a new section in our journal where we would like to give you the opportunity to learn from our local artists. Watch this space for tricks and tips on how to create the perfect image!

Gabriele Polizzi, in the art world known as GaPo, is a local Warwickshire artist who has had features in previous issues of ArtSpace. Having exhibited in several parts of the world, from London and Milan to Melbourne and Shanghai, we were very excited to get the opportunity to learn from his artistic experience!

Drawing from Photos: Squaring Up and Gridding

Imagine you find an inspirational photo whilst reading a magazine, browsing the internet, or even better a photograph you have taken yourself, and you really want to translate it in an amazing artwork. You can try drawing freehand straight on the paper hoping that the final result will be close enough to the original photo, or you can use a methodic approach below and obtain a result that will match the proportions and positioning in space.

The first step is matching the proportions of the photo to your paper (Fig. 1). Place your photo at the corner of your board and position a ruler on top of it so that it lines up with the corners. Where this line intersects the edge of the board this is where it needs to be cropped to match the proportions of the original photo.

Your next step is to transfer your image, scaling it up to the final intended size of your drawing. You can achieve an accurate transference from a photo to a drawing by using a grid system to help you maintain relationship between elements.

Create a grid over the source image, for example each square on the grid here measures 2cm (Fig. 2).

Your image is enlarged when you scale up the grid on your drawing paper, where you need to replicate the same number of columns and rows. In our example the new grid is 5cm square (Fig. 3).

Using the grid coordinates, you can now transfer the image onto your paper (Fig. 4). .

Fig. 1

Fig. 2