How to Enlarge Images For Watercolors, Drawings, Or Paintings Using a Grid

When you make art for fun or for profit, it is likely that you will come upon an image you need to expand. Maybe you took an extraordinarily good image of a landscape, or a friend or customer has a snapshot in e-mail that they want you to paint. When that happens, you will need to be able to fit it to the "canvas." Whether you are painting a mural on the side of a two storey structure, or just a pencil drawing on typing paper, here is a very straightforward technique to achieve it.

If the canvas you are going to be working on is of a manageable size, the easiest thing to do would be to design a grid. If you think of a map, visualise all of the horizontal and vertical lines. Usually, they are labelled with numbers and letters so that you can reference specific "squares" in that map. If you look at a map, you can see that the cities, landmarks and coastlines fall into distinct portions of the grid. If you are researching about Corel Draw institute in Delhi then you can take a visit to TGC India which is located in South Extension.

You may use that same approach to copy a drawing of any size. Photocopy or scan the original image, then draw a grid on top or make an overlay using a transparency. This is especially easy with today's technology when you can simply scan the image and open it in any of a variety of "image editors" such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw, or even MS Paint. You can then print the image with the grid in place.

Next, draw a grid to scale on the "canvas" of your choosing. For instance, paper if you are painting in a sketchbook, or on a wall if you are creating a mural. Draw your grid with a very delicate pencil or very light paint so that it may be erased or painted over when you are done. If you are using a lighter weight paper, less than 100# weight, you can create a grid in dark ink on a page underneath. Then clamp the pages together so that you can see the grid through the paper. That way, when you are done, you simply pull the gridded sheet out and there is no need to erase. The major benefit of this strategy is that the grid is reusable. If you make the grid on a transparency, you can even project it onto a wall with an overhead projector. 

Once you have the grid, simply move the primary features onto the your new surface. Just like looking for important towns or landmarks on a map, look for landmarks in your image. The corner of an eye, the bottom of an earring, and even the crease in a dimple can all function to assist place the image in the right scale and composition for your painting. For photoshop training in Delhi also you can go to South Extension at Tgc India because their faculty are so experienced.

Lightly sketch in all of the important features and landmarks. You will also want to rough in your value map or placement of all of the shadows, lights and darks in your image. Then remove your grid. If you drew it in place with pencil, carefully erase the lines trying sure to not damage your landmarks or smear your paper. If you painted them in on a larger project, simply paint over them.