Trace a portrait onto canvas with AR, then paint

Show two portraits side by side, one with the eyes placed too high on the head, one with them near the vertical midline where they usually sit. Ask which looks off, and why. Most students feel the error before they can name it. Name it for them: the eyes fall close to halfway down the head, and getting that one landmark right fixes most beginner portraits. This is what the overlay will help them check.

1. (4 min) Students set up the canvas and clamp the phone so the reference photo is locked over the canvas surface through the camera. The Grid Maker Pro AR app is a separate paid add-on that does this AR step; its free tier gives three traces of your own photo each month, which is enough for one classroom portrait per student. The 82 grids and the whole web tool stay free forever in the browser.
2. (6 min) With the reference locked in place, students block in only the big shapes by hand: the ball of the cranium, the wedge of the jaw, and a light centre line down the face. No eyes, no detail yet. AR places the shapes; the hand does the drawing.
3. (8 min) Students open the head-construction overlay in the free web tool on a laptop and compare it to their block-in. Does the brow line sit where the overlay puts it? Is the head too narrow? They mark the brow, nose base, and mouth as light guide lines across the block-in.
4. (9 min) Refine by hand. Students place the eyes on the brow line, spaced roughly one eye-width apart, then the nose and mouth on their guide lines. They are correcting against the overlay, not tracing the photo detail by detail.
5. (3 min) Honest note to the class: AR gets you a correct block-in fast, but the grid method — drawing the grid and copying cell by cell — builds the measuring eye that lets you eventually work without any aid. Use AR to get moving; keep practising the grid to get better.

• Which landmark was furthest off in your first block-in — the brow, the nose, or the width of the head?
• How is checking against the overlay different from copying the photo line for line?
• If your phone died mid-lesson, could you finish the block-in with a hand-drawn grid instead? What would that cost you in time?

Ask students to squint at their reference until the details blur and only large light and dark shapes remain. That squinted version is what they paint first. The block-in gave them the drawing; today they add value and colour without losing the proportions they already fixed.

1. (6 min) Students put the AR phone aside and glance at the reference only as a still image now. They lay in the largest dark shape (usually hair or shadow side) and the lightest light, establishing the value range before mixing skin tone.
2. (18 min) Work from big shapes to small: the mass of the face, then the planes of the cheek and forehead, then the features last. Because the block-in landmarks are already correct, a feature that starts to drift can be pulled back to its guide line. Encourage brush marks in the student's own hand rather than photographic smoothing.
3. (6 min) Mid-point check: hold the painting at arm's length beside the reference. If the likeness slipped, it is almost always a feature that migrated off its landmark. Correct the placement, not the rendering.

• Did the accurate block-in free you to focus on colour and value, or did you still fight the drawing?
• Where does your painting look most like you and least like the photo? Is that a flaw or a signature?
• Now that you have felt how the landmarks hold a likeness, could you block in your next portrait with less help?

To keep building the measuring eye, read how to trace a photo onto paper and try the same portrait with the square-grid method. The AR step lives in the Grid Maker Pro AR app; the overlays stay free in your browser.