The grid is a tool for transferring and scaling images accurately. From Alberti's veil to Durer's perspective machines to Chuck Close, learn its history and use.
In 1525, Albrecht Durer published a woodcut in his treatise Underweysung der Messung (Instruction in Measurement) that shows a draughtsman drawing a reclining woman through a gridded screen. The screen is a wooden frame with black threads stretched across it in a grid pattern. The artist sits behind the frame, looking through it at the model. On the table in front of him is a piece of paper with a corresponding grid drawn on it. He transfers what he sees in each cell of the frame to the matching cell on the paper. This is the earliest widely reproduced depiction of the grid method, and the technique was already a workshop tool by the time Durer engraved it. Five hundred years later, the grid is still in daily use, from art school classrooms to the studios of photorealist painters.
A grid, in the context of drawing and painting, is a network of intersecting lines that divides a reference image and a drawing surface into corresponding sections. The artist draws a grid over the reference image (or places a gridded frame between the eye and the subject) and draws the same grid on the paper or canvas. Then, cell by cell, the artist copies what appears in each section of the reference into the matching section of the drawing. The grid breaks the image into small, manageable units, making it easier to judge proportions, scale up or down, and transfer complex subjects accurately.
This entry covers the history of the grid method, how it works, the different types of grids, and the artists who have used it from the Renaissance to the present.
The grid method works on a simple principle. If you divide a reference image and a drawing surface into the same number of cells, each cell on the reference corresponds to a cell on the drawing. If the drawing surface cells are larger than the reference cells, the image is scaled up proportionally. If they are smaller, it is scaled down. The proportions of the image are preserved because the ratio between any two points in the reference is the same as the ratio between the corresponding points in the drawing.
The cognitive advantage of the grid is that it defeats what Betty Edwards, in her influential drawing manual Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, called "symbol substitution." Beginners draw their stored symbol for a thing rather than the thing itself. When asked to draw an eye, they draw an almond shape with a circle inside, regardless of what the actual eye in front of them looks like. The grid interrupts this process. When you look at a single cell of the reference, you are not looking at "an eye." You are looking at an abstract shape: a curve that enters the cell at the top left and exits at the right side, a dark area in the lower right corner. You copy that shape, not a symbol for an eye. The grid forces you to see what is actually there rather than what you think should be there.
Accuracy scales with cell count. A coarse 3-by-3 grid divides the image into 9 cells, which is enough for a rough block-in. A 20-by-20 grid divides it into 400 cells, bounding the error inside each cell and producing a much tighter placement. A finer grid forces tighter placement regardless of the artist's freehand ability. The scaffold does the proportional work.
Scale is a free parameter. Make the destination cells larger or smaller than the source cells and the drawing scales by exactly that ratio while every proportion is preserved. This is why the grid is used for mural scaling: a small reference can be transferred to a wall by drawing a grid on the reference, drawing a proportionally larger grid on the wall, and copying cell by cell.
The grid method has its origins in the Renaissance study of perspective. Leon Battista Alberti, in his treatise Della pittura (1435-1436), described a "veil" (velo) of fine thread stretched on a frame and divided into square sections by thicker threads. The artist set this frame between the eye and the object to be represented, so that the visual pyramid passed through the grid. Alberti wrote: "This intersection of the veil has many advantages, first of all because it always presents the same surface unchanged, for once you have fixed the position of the outlines, you can immediately find the apex of the pyramid you started with, which is extremely difficult to do without the intersection." The veil was both a measuring tool and a pedagogical device, helping the artist understand how perspective works by showing how a plane intersects a visual pyramid. Read about Alberti's veil at Sight-Size.
Alberti's work on perspective exerted a powerful influence on painters of the stature of Durer, Leonardo da Vinci, and Piero della Francesca. Durer's Underweysung der Messung of 1525 includes several woodcuts depicting perspective machines based on the grid principle. In one, the artist looks through a gridded frame at a seated model and transfers what he sees to a correspondingly gridded piece of paper. In another, the artist draws directly on a glass plate propped up in front of the model, tracing the outlines visible through the glass. A third shows a string running from a fixed point (the artist's eye, held steady by a vertical post) through the grid to a point on the model, with the artist marking where the string crosses the grid. These machines employ a glass plate or frame divided into small squares by a net or veil of black thread. Read about Durer's perspective machines at Gurney Journey.
Leonardo da Vinci described his own drawing grid in his notebooks, recommending that the artist "stand three times as far away as the object you are drawing." This distance ensures that the visual pyramid is shallow enough for the grid to work effectively. Leonardo's grid was a sheet of glass held up between the eye and the subject, on which the artist traced the outlines visible through the glass.
In 1866, Charles Bargue published his Cours de Dessin with Jean-Leon Gerome, making gridded proportional copying the foundation exercise of academic drawing. The Bargue plates, which consist of lithographic prints of classical sculptures and casts with grid lines for proportional transfer, became standard issue at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Students would copy the plates using the grid method, learning to see shapes and proportions accurately before attempting to draw from life. The Bargue plates remain core curriculum at the Florence Academy of Art, the Grand Central Academy in New York, and other contemporary ateliers that teach classical drawing methods.
In the 20th century, teachers like George Bridgman and Robert Beverly Hale at the Art Students League in New York carried proportional measurement into modern figure instruction, pairing the grid with sight-measurement and the figure canon. The grid became part of the standard toolkit for figure drawing, used alongside other measuring techniques like pencil sighting and plumb lines.
Durer's Underweysung der Messung (1525) contains the most famous depictions of the grid method in art history. His woodcuts show various configurations of gridded frames, glass plates, and string-and-weight systems for transferring three-dimensional subjects to two-dimensional surfaces. Durer's interest in the grid was part of his broader project to apply mathematical principles to art, which also included his work on perspective, proportion, and geometry.
Leonardo described a drawing grid in his notebooks, recommending a consistent viewing distance and a glass plate on which to trace outlines. His Vitruvian Man (c. 1490, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice) is itself based on a proportional system derived from Vitruvius, and the grid-like geometric construction underlying the drawing reflects the same mathematical approach to proportion that the grid method operationalizes.
Bargue's Cours de Dessin (1866-1871) made the grid method the foundation of academic drawing education. The course consists of nearly 200 lithographic plates that students copy using grid-based proportional transfer. The plates progress from simple outlines of features to full casts and sculptures. Vincent van Gogh copied the Bargue plates in 1880-1881, and Pablo Picasso copied them as a student. The course remains in use at classical ateliers today.
Van Gogh copied Bargue plates using the grid method in 1880-1881, early in his career. He later used viewfinder grids in his paintings, drawing grid lines directly on his canvases. Traces of these lines can be seen between brush strokes on some paintings at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. In a letter to Theo, Van Gogh described using grid lines to help with composition and proportion.
Close pushed the grid method to its precision limit. He divided photographs into extremely fine grids, sometimes 100 by 100 cells or finer, and painted each cell as a small abstract unit. At close range, the painting looks like a field of colored squares. At a distance, the cells resolve into a photographic likeness. Close's Big Self-Portrait (1967-1968, Walker Art Center) and his later fingerprint and pastel works all use the grid as the structural basis of the image. For Close, the grid was not just a scaffold to be erased after use. It was the subject of the painting, made visible as part of the finished work.
The most common type. The reference and the drawing surface are divided into equal squares. If the drawing surface is larger than the reference, the squares on the drawing are proportionally larger, and the image is scaled up. If the drawing surface is smaller, the image is scaled down. The square grid is used for everything from simple block-ins to mural scaling.
Alberti's veil and Durer's perspective machines use a grid that is not just a measuring tool but a perspective construction device. The grid is placed between the eye and the subject, and the artist transfers what appears in each cell to the corresponding cell on the drawing surface. Because the grid is at a fixed distance from the eye, the perspective is consistent across the entire image. This type of grid is used for accurate perspective drawing of complex scenes.
Some grids include diagonal lines as well as horizontal and vertical ones. The diagonals help with finding centers, checking proportions, and drawing symmetrical features. The Gridvu viewable grid system includes diagonal lines, making it useful for portraits and figure drawing where symmetry and proportion are critical.
In the 21st century, digital tools have replaced physical grids for many artists. Apps like Drawing Grid Maker overlay a grid on a digital photograph, which the artist then copies to a physical surface. The app can adjust the grid size, color, and line thickness, and some versions can overlay the grid on a live camera view, turning a phone or tablet into a digital viewfinder. These tools were featured on the television program Portrait Artist of the Year, where competitors used them to plan their portraits.
A persistent myth holds that using a grid is cheating. It is not. The grid is a measuring tool, like a ruler, a compass, or a sight-stick. Durer, the Beaux-Arts, and the photorealists all used it openly. The skill in drawing is not in guessing proportions without aids. It is in observation, refinement, and finishing, none of which the grid does for you. The grid gives you the scaffold. What you build on that scaffold is up to you.
That said, the grid has a limitation. It encourages piecemeal seeing: drawing one cell at a time without attending to the overall gestalt of the image. R.H. Ives Gammell, the 20th-century proponent of Sight-Size drawing, was vehemently against piecemeal seeing for this reason. The grid almost guarantees that you are engaging in it, because you are drawing shape by shape rather than seeing the big look. The solution is to use the grid for the initial block-in and then erase it, spending your skill on value, edge, and likeness rather than continuing to work cell by cell.
The grid is related to the viewfinder, which provides the framing function that the grid adds proportional transfer to. Alberti's veil, which combines both functions, is the ancestor of both tools. The grid is used in thumbnail sketching to plan compositions and in contour drawing exercises to develop accuracy. It is also related to the camera obscura and camera lucida, which are optical devices that serve similar transfer functions. For more on drawing techniques, read our post on reading a drawing, or explore our guide to chiaroscuro and drawing.
The most visible example of the grid in a finished artwork is Chuck Close's Big Self-Portrait at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. At close range, you can see the individual cells, each painted as a small abstract unit of color. Step back twenty feet, and the cells merge into a photographic likeness of the artist's face. The grid is not hidden. It is the structural basis of the image, made visible as part of the painting's meaning.
For a historical perspective, Durer's woodcuts from Underweysung der Messung are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, and other major print rooms. They show the grid method at the moment of its first wide dissemination, 500 years ago, and the technique they depict is the same one you can use today with a piece of paper, a ruler, and a pencil.
For more on drawing tools and techniques, read our entries on the viewfinder and thumbnail sketch, or explore our post on oil painting and drawing fundamentals.
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