Grid Drawing

What is Dilation?

Dilation is the process of taking an object, measuring it (with a grid, or actual measurements) and multiplying that measurement up in order to enlarge the object in scale, so that the object (and any object that you surround it with) are all proportionate. The object in question could also be an image.

Why is it important to draw with a grid system when you are drawing from a reference photo?

Grids enable the artist to reference where to draw what where, on a bigger scale. The whole concept is replication at a bigger size, while remaining proportionate.When would something like this be helpful other than in art?

This is helpful in a lot of places. All of our electronic devices rely on dilation and miniaturization for the interfaces and content displayed on them to display correctly. In video, what size you shoot, edit, render, and view in all matters because of this. If you do one of those too small, it’s going to look terrible. If you do one of those too big, then it’ll end up impossible to consume, because nobody has the technology to support it. In graphic editors like Illustrator, Sketch, or Figma, they utilize vector graphics that rather than being at fixed sizes which won’t scale up or down properly, scale however you want. The only way for a computer to calculate this is with a grid and a coordinate system.

Why is it important to draw with a grid system when you are drawing from a reference photo?

When you are color mixing what colors should you mix together to make tints and shades?

If you want to shade a color (take a color and make it darker) then you need to use a darker value of that color, or a black or gray darker than whatever the mid value is. If you want to tint a color, then you use white, a lighter value of the color that you’re using, or a gray above your mid value and mix it in to lighten the color.

When color mixing what are the better colors to use to make bright colors? What color schemes do you mix to make a muddy color?

If you mix all of the colors in a warm analogous scheme, you’ll end up with a muddy color. This doesn’t apply to colder (bluer) colors because if you mix them together, it’ll be more consistent with what you’re mixing.