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Background
Ever since art began, the primary objective of most artists and illustrators has been to create as realistic as possible a representation of the scene, object or face in front of them. The biggest hurdle for most is to get the initial proportions or layout correct.
The traditional method of recreating an image, employed by artists since forever, is to measure the major proportions, angles and relative positions of a subject by eye (often using just a pencil at the end of an extended arm). The image is then built up from one datum point and, hopefully, all these measurements and cross-references will lay the foundation for a realistic representation.
The curves, outlines and contours are then interpolated by ‘joining the dots’. Unfortunately this method takes a lot of practice, requires good spacial judgement, and any errors have a tendency to compound each other.
So, for hundreds of years artists, including Dürer and Michelangelo, have used drawing aids, in particular a grid method. The grid system is now a commonplace technique and is particularly useful to beginners who have yet to develop their eye and their confidence.
It has many manifestations but, in essence, all use some form of grid or mesh to divide the view of the subject into squares; and some way of laying squares onto the paper. The artists then relates what he sees in each subject square and can then place appropriate marks in the corresponding square on the paper, thus getting a much more accurate reproduction.
There are many different forms of grid system and there have been many weird and wonderful inventions or contraptions to apply it. A lot of these address the first of the two main phases: to divide the subject up into squares or impose a grid on it. For the purposes of our product, we intend to use a simple plastic sheet with a printed grid on it which is placed over a photograph to be reproduced. There is nothing novel or unique in this.
The second phase involves copying each square onto the final medium, usually paper. This is a much more convoluted area and is where I believe we have created a new, unique and useful solution.
Current Options
The most common methods used to date to create this secondary image include projection, pre-printing, manual gridding, and tracing.
Projection This is where a lighting device is poised over the paper and shines a grid down on the paper. As can be imagined, this is generally cumbersome, unsuitable for outdoors and expensive.
Manual Gridding This involves the artist carefully drawing a feint pencil grid across their paper, then erasing it again after the subject has been mapped on to it. It is not only tedious and difficult to create an accurate grid in the first place, but fiddly, time-consuming and sometimes impossible to to erase the grid with out damaging the image.
Pre-printing Here lines are pre-printed on art paper. A convenient solution but only if the lines are subsequently obscured, so it really only applies to painting. Also it restricts the choice of sizes and types of papers to the proprietary ones, which are also expensive.
(There are some such products which allow the background mesh to be washed off, but this obviously restricts what medium you can use i.e. not water-colours.)
Tracing This is a two- or three-stage process whereby the image is copied onto a simple sheet of gridded paper. This in turn is transferred to the final paper by tracing over the intermediate image with a sheet of carbon or graphite paper underneath. As can be imagined, this can all be incredibly tedious, repetitive and open to distortions, either a little bit in each stage, or because the tracing paper moves.
A better solution
What is needed is a solution which includes the following features:
Easy-Draw addresses all of these issues, is simplicity in the extreme, and appears to be unique. The essential feature is a transparent plastic sheet that is laid over the final medium (usually a piece of paper). Cut through the sheet are regular squares corresponding to the spaces on the grid overlaying the original subject. These cut-outs provide access to the paper underneath so the artist can place his mark or line directly onto the paper. The accuracy with which he can do this depends on practice and judgement, which may be guided by marks on either of the overlay sheets.

Once the artist is satisfied they have enough ‘marks’ on their drawing to provide sufficient guidelines for an accurate image, they remove the overlay sheet and proceed with their drawing/painting as normal, but with no trace of a grid.
Marks vs Lines
One fundamental point should be made at this stage. It will be obvious that the freedom for placing marks on the page is potentially restricted by the ‘bars’ between the cut-out squares.
The wider the bars, the more area of the paper is obscured and hence unavailable to place marks; the narrower the bars, though, and the flimsier the overlay becomes. (The ideal compromise was found by experimenting with bar and square proportions, and the thickness and material of the overlay sheet).
One way round the ‘problem’ is to move the ‘subject’ and ‘image’ grids an identical amount up and sideways so the obscured areas are now ‘in the clear’. This could be achieved in a number of ways that do not really alter the basic principle. However, there is a more basic contention – that this is not really a problem anyway.
For some reason the implicit concept with most grid systems is that the artist will trace the major contours or outlines in continuous lines. This is clearly not possible using a cut-out grid. Yet the the traditional long-arm-and-a-pencil technique relies on making a few ‘marks’ and interpolating between them. Meanwhile, a grid system ensures errors are limited to each individual square, so the overall effect is likely to be more accurate.
Best of both worlds
Easy-Draw is essentially a compromise between these two approaches: ‘joining the dots’ and a grid system. The system is sold as matched pairs of subject and image grids. The former is a straightforward mesh printed on a plastic sheet. The artist aligns the subject grid over the photograph, say, such that as many of the major focus points as possible (such as eyes, bottom of chin, top of mountain, edge of vase, whatever) are ‘in the clear’ i.e. not under a bar.
The essential novel development is that the second ‘image’ grid is stamped out of a transparent sheet of plastic. Thus the artist is then able to mark these focal points directly on his paper, building up as many reference marks as he needs, albeit within the ‘open’ areas. These can include dots, suggestions of curves and angles, parts of outlines, etc.
So, to a large extent, he is just emulating the traditional method of laying down guide marks, but in a far easier, quicker and more accurate way, because the grid had dramatically restricted the margin of error. Moreover, many people will find that, though they cannot trace the continuous lines they have come to expect with other grid systems, they get more satisfaction, spontaneity and freshness in their drawings because they are doing more creating and less copying.
