Author: Cathy_Sheeter, Contributing Editor

Have you ever started working on a new drawing or painting and put in your entire preliminary sketch then stood back and realized that something was not quite right? Some part of your sketch is throwing off the accuracy of the entire piece. It is not always easy to tell where you are off. Is everything off or just one feature? When trying to create a piece that resembles a specific person, animal or object the preliminary sketch on your paper or canvas will guide you through the entire rest of your work. Having everything in the right place will help ensure the accuracy of the work.

This tutorial will guide you through a simple process of using Photoshop to evaluate your sketch in reference to the photograph you are working from. This technique uses very basic Photoshop skills and any version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements may be used. The commands I will be using and screen shots are from Photoshop 7.0, so may differ slightly from your version. Just look around a bit and I am sure you will be able to find the same commands on your program.

Here is the reference photo I will be using for my drawing.

I did a freehand preliminary sketch of my photo. I feel like something is a bit off in my sketch, but am not sure what it is.

The first problem we need to fix is that our reference photo and sketch are very different sizes. We will need to resize them to be essentially the same size. By viewing the size of the photo (Image>Image Size) we find that the photo is 350 pixels wide by 263 pixels tall. Now I go to my scanned in sketch and resize to about the same size. I select to resize my sketch to 350 pixels wide and then do minor size adjustments until it looks the same size as the photo. Be sure that the box that says "constrain proportions" has a check mark next to it or your image will become stretched out of proportion.

Don't wait - discuss this topic with fellow artists now in our forum!

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