Exercise 1: Enlarging an existing drawing
As I have previously used scaling up in my personal work, namely portraits, this was a concept that I was already quite familiar with; I found this exercise the most straight forward to date!
As suggested, I chose a simple mug and set about making a small sketch in my A4 sketcbook. One thing I was unsure of, however, was if it needed to be modelled (i.e. usuing tone etc), or left flat. I had already subconsciously started to shade it so finished doing so, but then afterwards – when gridding up the larger A2 sheet for transferring the image – I wasn’t sure how to present it.
I decided that I wouldn’t shade the larger piece after all; I figured that the main exercise was to see if the right information could be transferred to each square, and getting the tone and markings all correct would be tricky and not really the point of the exercise. One thing I did notice though -scaling up from a drawing rather than a photograph – was that mistakes in form are easily spotted; I noticed the ellipse representing the top of the mug was slightly off, mostly the top-most line that wasn’t quite mirroring the curve of the bottom line.
Exercise 2: Enlarging a simple flat image
I selected simple objects for this exercise, that would combine to make a composition of varying sizes and shapes. I settled on a 15×15 cm grid as this seemed to contain the image perfectly. Again, I struggled a little with the ellipses on the vase and mug, so was a little worried about how they would transfer to the larger scaled-up piece…
I have to say, I found transferring multiple objects easier than a single one; I can only guess that this is because I was able to compare the size of one object to another, rather than worry about the exact proportions of one object that sat on its own in the middle of the page.
Conclusion
As mentioned, I feel that mistakes are highlighted more when scaling up from an existing drawing, rather than from a photograph; any mistakes (such as wonky ellipses) are compounded and carried over, so it really is essential to ensure accuracy – if that is what you are striving for, of course – in order to produce a satisfying larger drawing.
I found transferring ellipses from small to large difficult, as in normal drawing I am used to arching my tool slightly and making long, sweeping movements to draw them. Here, however, I had to almost stop-start in a way to ensure I was getting the right information in each box. So therefore, I need to work on drawing shapes such as these when scaling up on a grid, so that they still flow and don’t end up as a series of curved marks as opposed to one fluid one.
My BA (Hons) Creative Arts Journey with the OCA 