I don’t even know if calling it an artistic process is accurate, since I first encountered it in puzzle books as a kid.
It’s where you have an image that has been divided up into a grid of squares. When it’s done as a puzzle, what you are given is the squares, in scrambled order, and you have to reproduce what’s on each square and put it in its assigned place on the grid. It’s not until you have all the squares reproduced and in the correct order that you see what the larger image is.
It’s called “drawing with a grid”, or “drawing square by square.” AFAIK, there is not a technical term for it.
You’d be suprised how many artist use this technique. Although some “art snobs” consider it cheating. It’s been a hot topic on the art message board I lurk at, several times.
The old frescoists used it a lot, of course. If you look at, say, Masaccio’s Trinity carefully you can still see the grid-lines.
They can especially be seen in this work as well.
Thanks, all. I’m trying to figure out a way to organize a participatory art project, and drawing square-by-square occurred to me as one way to go about it. Perhaps there are others…and I should start a new thread about that in Cafe Society!
The film Artemisia showed artistic training using a grid made of wires stretched on a big frame. The art student looked through it at the subject while painting.
