Contour Drawings & Weekend Blog Homework #2
We were introduced to contour drawings in class on Wednesday and will continue to explore a few variations on the this type of drawing again next week.
Contour drawings are good way to start our class in drawing because they are very helpful to build our eye hand coordination and our capacity of observation, the heart of what drawing from life is all about. The first thing to remember in contour drawings is to let go of all your expectations of what you think a good or bad drawing should look like. These are awkward drawings. It is about learning to see, not making a beautiful drawing.
A contour drawing is a type of line drawing the relies solely on the element of the line to articulate or describe the subject of the drawing. There are lots of variations of contour drawings. This week we tried 2 different variations of contour drawings this week in-class: blind contours and continuous line contours.
For your drawing homework this weekend, please use the 3 pieces of paper provided in class to do 3 more blind contour drawings of whatever you want from your daily life. Use whatever drawing materials you have at home (pencils, markers, pens.. etc.) Bring your contour drawings with you to class on Wednesday next week and take pictures of them and post them to your drawing blogs.
Remember these key things about contour drawing when doing this drawing exercise this weekend:
1.) Contour Drawing is about learning to see (through the idea of touch).
2.) Contour Drawing is a line drawing. (There is no shading or value in this type of drawing.)
3.) Work big to small. Make slow confident lines as accurate to your looking as possible. You should be looking at what you are drawing at least 90% of the time. You should only be looking at your paper at most 10% of the time.
This video demo of contour drawing from youtube is one of the better ones I’ve seen. Please watch this video to reiterate for yourself what a contour drawing is all about.
a screenshot of my google search for “contour drawings” FYI
the in-class drawings list of what we did this week
