A) The Subject and a Grid

1.  Introduction
I once heard that Da Vinci said, "Every great painting, starts as a great drawing".  I don't know if Da Vinci said that - but it is true.  A good drawing is an excellent map to guide a watercolour painting.  I have lessons on Grid Drawings, that you can go to for more in-depth teaching on drawing with a grid, but these first couple of lessons are to prep you for an easy watercolour painting.

2. Choosing a subject

I like to paint people because I think they are the easiest to paint.  For this lesson, we are going to use a stock photo of a woman in a hat.  There a couple of things that I look for when choosing a person for my subject matter.  I usually look for dramatic lighting where the emphasis of the dark and light focuses the viewer on the person. Second, I look for simple shapes and lines in the person's face.  This will make it easier to draw and paint.  I have linked a folder with Headshots for you to use for this assignment.  Download the assignment to "My Documents".

3. Getting the Grid on the Original Photo.
To do this I use Microsoft Word.  I made two templates in Word for photos that are orientated landscape and portrait.  I just used a table for the grid and you can download either one here: Landscape Grid Template   Portrait Grid Template.

Its pretty easy to "insert" the picture into grid. Open the Grid Template that suits your photo.  Click on the cell A1 and insert a picture.

Once you put the photo into the grid.  The grid lines will push over to one side.  This is easy to fix by placing the photo "Behind Text".  The image should be underneath the grid.  

I placed this image into the Portrait Grid because I wanted to crop the photo so the woman would fill the page more.  You can do this too with Word (you can do all of this in Photoshop too, but its just as easy in Word). 

You will need to click on the "Picture Tools - Format" menu at the top of Word and choose to "Crop". 

The black handles are to crop the photo.  I make these match the grid.  The white handles are to resize the photo and I will enlarge this to have the woman better fit the grid.  The enlarged photo will stay within the cropped size.  Once you are done click on Crop again and your photo should fit nicely into the grid. 

Then, print in colour and you are ready to begin drawing.