Grid overlays are one of the most underused features in EchoDraw — and one of the most powerful, especially if you're working on proportion or perspective-heavy pieces like portraits, figures, or architecture.
Your eye is bad at judging proportion across an entire subject at once, but very good at judging it within a small box. A grid breaks your reference into a series of small, manageable boxes — so instead of drawing "a face," you're drawing "what's in this one square," nine or sixteen times over.
Pick a starting square — usually the eyes if it's a portrait, or the horizon line if it's a landscape — and get that one square correct before moving to the next. Resist the urge to work on the whole image at once. Grid-based drawing rewards patience.
Once you've built up the base structure and you're confident in the major proportions, turn the grid off and finish the piece by eye. This keeps you from over-relying on the grid for details where it doesn't add much value — texture, shading, and expression are better judged holistically.
If you want to train your proportion sense specifically, try this: trace the same reference twice — once with the grid on, once without, a day apart. Compare the two. Most people are surprised how much closer their "freehand" version is after a grid session the day before.
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