Transferring concept art to final workpiece

this one is always difficult as I’ve found I usually don’t start drawing the artwork on the final surface them painting it, but rather do concept pieces on a smaller scale then combine them together to create the final design. Traditionally this process can be done by hand or by the use of an opaque art projector to scale up projects or add elements.

Some other ideas for this would be, if you can get your hands on a large scale plotter, you could potentially print your art, either onto the final work surface or onto matte frisked for transfer. This would allow you to design certain parts digitally, then combine them together on a computer prior to printing the artwork. Any other ideas for do g this stuff?

how big are we talking about?

and is it a regular shape or curved shape you are transferring on to?

When I was in school I was always taught the grid method. It's super low tech (basically as old as civilization), but it works well.

Get a ruler and a pencil, and draw a grid on your concept. The more squares, the better. Then draw the same grid on your work space: same number of squares on each side, but scaled up to fill the work surface. Then reference and redraw the contents of each square individually.

Copying each square individually simplifies the work, and the makes sure everything is in the right place. As long as you pay attention to where the lines on the concept intersect the lines of the squares (i.e. "this line enters the square intersecting the bottom border 1/3 from the right, then exits the square intersecting the top border 4/5 to the right", and suchlike), you can copy the original art very accurately.

Nessus said:

When I was in school I was always taught the grid method. It's super low tech (basically as old as civilization), but it works well.

Get a ruler and a pencil, and draw a grid on your concept. The more squares, the better. Then draw the same grid on your work space: same number of squares on each side, but scaled up to fill the work surface. Then reference and redraw the contents of each square individually.

Copying each square individually simplifies the work, and the makes sure everything is in the right place. As long as you pay attention to where the lines on the concept intersect the lines of the squares (i.e. "this line enters the square intersecting the bottom border 1/3 from the right, then exits the square intersecting the top border 4/5 to the right", and suchlike), you can copy the original art very accurately.

Click to expand...

Yeah it’s a good one, especially for very large wall murals.

I have used several techniques
The grid method
Using a pic as a template/stencil
The old pencil lead on the back of the reference then tracing onto the substrate
Saral paper
I've used my cutter too but fortunately most of the time I'm able to just draw what I see bigger or smaller and that's normally the method I use unless I need super accurate reference. Then I use a pic made to the correct size. For this method I have used online picture resizers to make them larger which you then print out and put together. I've also used a piece of software called rasterbater which does the same thing, then you print it out and it basically puts the pic to several sheets of paper which you trim and tape together to make your big pic. So there's a few ways to do it, it depends on the application and how accurate you want the pic to be. Hope this helps a bit.

Lee