Scaling a drawing up using a grid
Art & Design · Key Stage 2 · The School
Enlarging by eye goes wrong fast
Try copying a small picture onto a much larger sheet by eye alone. Proportions drift. One part ends up too big, another too small, and nothing quite lines up. A grid fixes this problem completely. Even careful artists fall into this trap without one.
Dividing both images the same way
Draw an even grid of small squares over the original image. Draw the SAME NUMBER of squares on the larger sheet, scaled up. Each larger square now matches exactly one smaller square. The huge task becomes many tiny, manageable ones instead, and each one is easy to check on its own.
Copying one square at a time
Work on only one square at a time. Copy exactly what appears in the matching small square. Ignore the rest of the picture completely while you do it. A small, odd-looking fragment is far easier to copy accurately than a whole complicated image at once. Most squares turn out easier than expected once isolated like this.
A photograph is 10 cm wide. It needs enlarging onto a poster 100 cm wide — ten times bigger. A grid of 1 cm squares is drawn over the photograph. A grid of 10 cm squares is drawn on the poster, with the same NUMBER of squares. Square by square, each small square's content is copied into its matching large square. Nobody looks at the whole picture at once while working. When every square is finished, the grid lines are rubbed out. The drawing is then checked against the original. The proportions match closely, because each tiny piece was copied accurately, one at a time.