Techniques

Got your attention? Good.

The topic of cheating may surprise non-artists. Artists are those whiz kids that could pick up a pencil and bang out a realistic drawing in no time flat, while our stuff was barely above a toddler’s first scribblings, right?

Wrong.

A surprising number of artists actually do most of their work by “cheating.” I’ve seen quite a few methods, including:

• tracing
• gridding (grid method)
• camera obscura
• opaque projectors
• carbon transfers
• digital image printed directly on canvas

I could probably name more but these are the most common ways to cheat. Have you seen those Google Adsense ads saying “your portrait from your picture, just $75, done in 2 days?” Most of these places use one or a combination of these techniques. Amazing portrait secrets, indeed.

• Tracing
  Tracing typically involves a “light table” that’s a piece of plexiglass (semi-opaque) on top of a box with a light in it. You place the original on the table and your paper above it, and you can typically see just enough (with some peeking under the top sheet to make sure you’re staying on track) to get a great likeness. Then you finish the shading, etc., on your own.
• Carbon transfer
  A variant of tracing is using a carbon transfer. You place tracing paper over the original photo and trace, similar to the light table technique. You clearly don’t want the finished product on tracing paper, though, so you would then place a sheet of carbon paper between your final drawing surface and the tracing paper, then re-trace over your lines on the tracing paper, resulting in a perfect likeness on the high quality paper (or canvas, if you so choose).
• Grid (gridding technique)
  Anyone that’s ever done a “Skillogram” in a crossword puzzle book will be familiar with this technique.
  Gridding is BY FAR the most common technique I’ve seen used and taught to students. Heck, it was even a project in an Art 101 class I took in college! What you do here is you either directly grid over your reference image or place an acetate/transparency sheet with a grid on it directly over the reference image (secure with tape or whatever). Then create a similar grid on your final surface, be it bristol board, sketch paper, canvas, or what have you. You can have equal size grids or you can have different sizes to enlarge (or reduce) the final image.
• Camera obscura
  If you don’t know, a camera obscura is simply a box with a pinhole and a mirror, reflecting onto a glass surface. You can put a grid onto the glass surface to create a variant of the grid technique. Some examples don’t cite a grid, in which this is a variant of the tracing cheat. Some people will attempt to assuage their guilt by saying “it’s been proven that Vermeer used a camera obscura so why can’t I?” Others will say “the great masters would use grids to enlarge their work, so why can’t I?”
  • You’re not a “great master” of the Renaissance
  • The “great masters” spent a great deal of time learning to see properly, and learning to draw properly
  • The “great masters” used a grid on THEIR OWN WORK, not on a photograph

• Opaque projector
  I don’t remember where, but I read an article about a portrait artist that used an opaque projector. He would take reference photos (his own or the client’s) and place on them on the projector, which would project onto his canvas. Here’s the trick: blur the projector entirely out of focus, then lay in your foundation colors. When dry, focus 1/4 of the way and paint in additional details. Do it again at 1/2 focus, 3/4 focus, then finalize at full focus. Voilà! Now you have a perfect likeness, even with subtle colors and maybe even a perfect replica of that difficult sofa pattern! Amazing portrait secret, huh?
• Digital transfer
  A decidedly modern way to cheat at drawing is to simply send off your photo to a lab that will print the image onto a canvas for you. You just take it home and paint directly over the printed image with oil paint, pastels, etc. Another amazing portrait secret.

My thoughts on “cheating”
I’m sure that professional artists (defined as working artists that are making money) can pump out some fairly high quality images pretty fast using these techniques. These techniques probably make the artists a lot of money – and for a lot of people, making money as an artist is very fulfilling and they don’t mind the cheat. Then again, I’d hesitate to really call them “artists,” and I’m sure that’s bound to really irk some people that use these techniques. But that’s how I feel so take it for what it’s worth.

Does it matter?
We’ve all seen those Google ads promising a quick portrait in oils from your photo. I really believe that most people are completely satisfied with the end-product and really couldn’t care less about the method employed getting there. If it does matter to you, then look at some samples of the finished product compared to the reference photo. If the likeness is dead on, without a stray hair’s difference between the original and the final “work of art,” then move on. You can tell by the lifeless gaze, the carbon copy work if the artist employed a cheat as the primary method of doing the portrait. The old adage applies, “you get what you pay for.”

Okay, smartie-pants, how’s it done, then?
What *I* do is the sight-size method. I hold up my pencil and relate, compare, mark out guidelines, and gradually work up a portrait. It is not easy and it takes a long time. I dare say that because it takes a long time, I would have to be much better than I am now to do this as my full time job. And therein lies the hitch: do it the “right” way and create some beautiful works that you can really be proud of, or “cheat” your way to success and profits. Perhaps there’s a middle ground.

A great way to “learn to see” is to actually step back and do the basics, which I’ll cover in a future article, including blind contours, modified blind contours, full contours, and moving on to advanced stuff like doing the Bargue plates (you can see examples at the appropriately entitled site, Learning to See).

I’m going to do a series on “cheats,” actually employing each cheat that I can (I’m not sending off to have a photograph printed on a canvas) and hopefully I can get some people to post their results along with me. Barring that, hopefully someone tries the technique and gets hooked, wanting to learn how to do it right and sets off on their own art adventure.