/ˈsaɪt saɪz/

Sight-size

noun · drawing method

What it is

In sight-size, the artist sets the easel beside the subject — a cast, a still life, or a model — and steps back to a fixed spot, usually marked on the floor, that stays the same for the whole study. From that spot, the drawing and the subject appear at exactly the same scale in the field of view. Because they match, the artist can glance from one to the other and see any error of proportion directly, without measuring or calculating: a line that is too long simply looks too long against its neighbour. Measurements are often checked by holding up a plumb line or a straight edge from the fixed viewpoint.

Sight-size trades the portability and flexible scaling of squaring up for the discipline of a fixed comparison. It handles proportion by eye — trained comparison — rather than by geometry, which is why it is taught as an observational skill rather than a copying shortcut.

Etymology

The name is plain description: the work is made at the size it is sighted, or seen, from the viewing spot. The approach is closely associated with the nineteenth-century academic atelier and with the influential Drawing Course of Charles Bargue and Jean-Léon Gérôme (published from 1866), whose lithographic plates trained students to copy exactly what they saw at the scale they saw it.¹ The term remains standard in contemporary ateliers that revived this training.

Examples in use

A cast-drawing student works sight-size so a tutor can hold the study beside the plaster and see every deviation at once. A portrait painter sets the canvas next to the sitter and steps back to a taped mark to compare head and canvas at equal scale. Grid Maker Pro is a different tool for a related need: the free browser web tool lets you check proportion against a reference photo when a fixed-viewpoint setup is not practical, and its overlays sit alongside — not in place of — observational methods like sight-size.