Drawing & Painting by Numbers: Proportions, Grid Enlargement, Perspective, Composition Grids, Colour-Mixing Ratios, Canvas Sizes & Framing

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Turn a fictional figure canon into target positions on a 24 cm drawing, compare a student's measured landmarks with the targets and count the ones outside the allowed deviation.
• Find the scale factor that fits a 15 × 10 cm sketch onto a 50 × 40 cm canvas, size the canvas grid, transfer six points and name the grid square each point falls in.
• Compare the ratio of a reference photo with seven canvas sizes, calculate how much of the image is lost when a canvas is filled and fit the image into a 50 × 40 cm canvas with even margins.
• Use similar triangles to draw eight equal fence posts at growing distances: their drawn height, their offset from the vanishing point, where their tops sit relative to the horizon and how the gaps shrink.
• Construct the side edges of a box between two vanishing points with straight-line interpolation, calculate how tall the receding edge is drawn and check four sketched lines for how far they miss their vanishing point.
• Place thirds and golden-ratio guide lines on a 70 × 50 cm canvas, measure how far a focal point is from the nearest thirds crossing and classify six thumbnail sketches by where their focal point sits.
• Turn a mixing recipe in parts into millilitres for a batch, find which colour limits the largest batch from stock and estimate the paint to mix for a 60 × 45 cm canvas.
• Plan mats and frames for five fictional artworks: outer mat sizes with a weighted bottom, the moulding length with mitre allowance, a price from a banded price-per-cm² table and a chart of the prices.