Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Sight-Size Viewer Aids Accuracy

I had opinions about sight-size viewers until I built a "Gurney Grid" and tried it out. Excerpt from my new YouTube video. 

Posted by James Gurney at Tuesday, March 22, 2022

4 comments:

David M said...

I was very surprised to see you use one of these. I suspect your prior opinions on the tool match my own, using grids or tracing is a crutch that makes you a slave to the reference and inhibits your skill growth in freehand drawing ability.

I look forward to hearing the nuance of your fresh opinion.

March 23, 2022 at 7:49 PM
widdly said...

I am the proud owner of a diy Gurney grid which I find useful for perspective and architecture drawings. Nice to know the correct name for it! Would love to hear any tips for working with it.

March 23, 2022 at 8:20 PM
Pat Rock said...

If I remember correctly you showed that sight size viewer for the fist time several years ago when painting an old house. Good to see you're still experimenting with it and I hope you share more about it.

Cheers,
Pat

March 24, 2022 at 10:00 AM
VirginiaFhinn said...

I’ve recently experimented with an app called DaVinci Eye - using the AR mode where you can anchor your image to something in your drawing space and then trace. It’s not perfect, but it’s great for laying in things quickly in perspective, getting the relative size/shape of objects in the right place. I use it when I don’t want to spend much time guessing about the drawing. I do draw often, and consider using this tool or any sightsize tool to pretty much be an entirely different skill, coming with their own challenges. Another thing I do is trace an image from my iMac to transfer to canvas - I’ll blow up the image to the size of my canvas, tape a sheet of tracing paper over the monitor. I put conte or charcoal on the back and then transfer to the canvas, after making changes that I might want to the composition. This, again, is just a tool - when you start painting you are inevitably going to lose your drawing at some point- not a question of if, but when. The art is about the finished piece, and how the viewer connects to it. Not about the tools used to make it.

April 18, 2022 at 6:47 AM

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