It makes no difference where you start.ģ. Pretend that your pencil is touching the subject at a certain spot. Look at the subject first and try to hold its form in your mind.Ģ. We’ll deal only with Modified, since Blind Contour leads to a lot of distortion. With blind contour, the student draws continuously, around and within the form, never looking at the paper or stopping. There are two kinds of contour drawing: Blind and Modified. I’ve noticed that a lot of beginning students tend to look at their paper more often than at the subject - this defeats the idea of observation, of course. To do this, the student must draw slowly, pretending that his pencil touches the form as he draws, and he never draws while looking at his paper. Both senses of sight and touch must be used. It creates the illusion of three dimensions on a flat surface by defining shared edges. Symbolism has taken over.Ī contour drawing is not an outline, but much more than that. This is shown often when an adult resorts to the “lollipop” trees she drew as a child, even though she sees the tree plainly with sky holes, asymmetrical shapes, and individual clumps of leaves. One of the chief drawbacks to learning how to draw is that our left brains have a mental picture of the way something should look, and we resort to that rather than how it really looks. Later artists such as Betty Edwards and Gerald Brommer also included this technique in their instruction books. Classes in life drawing at the Kansas City Art Institute reinforced this information. The book has been reprinted several times, and is a standard. I first learned of contour drawing from a book, The Natural Way to Draw, by Kimon Nicolaides published in 1941. I find it a most useful exercise in teaching students to SEE. I usually start my drawing classes with exercises in contour drawing from life. The above drawing is of a student in one of my drawing classes. The example above was done in about 7 minutes from a model’s pose. Where the form recedes, you press in with the pencil or charcoal when the form comes forward, you press lightly. In this case, you work from the center outward, not worrying about edges, almost like a sculptor modeling a form in clay. From scribbly, quick drawings, he progressed to weighted or modeled drawings to suggest the bulk – the solidness of the form. I first learned about gesture drawing from Nicolaides’ book, The Natural Way to Draw, first published in 1941. I often use gesture drawing when starting a composition to place my drawing on the paper as large as I want it. This is a great way to “loosen” up anytime before you start to draw. There are two reasons for this: to train your hand to capture action and form, and to force you to zero in on the most significant element – the movement. See how much you can put down of the action in the shortest time possible. Time your drawings - start out with 20 second drawings and gradually increase to five or ten minute drawings. It might be best not to start with drawing the head. Draw continuously and don’t try to follow the edges. DRAW NOT WHAT THE SUBJECT LOOKS LIKE, NOT EVEN WHAT IT IS, BUT WHAT IT IS DOING. Your objective is to grasp the essential gesture (movement) very quickly. It’s almost like “doodling.” Don’t take your pencil off the paper and look at your model 95% of the time, but draw as fast as you can. Hold the pencil or charcoal stick loosely in the middle, not on its end. It’s best to do gesture drawing standing up at an easel for freedom of movement. What you want to do is to grasp the whole movement or action as quickly as you can, loosely drawing as fast as you can. In gesture drawing, however, work from the whole to the parts – the “gestalt” of what you are drawing. You are progressing from the part to the whole - seeing one section at a time. In contour drawing, you drew slowly, keeping your eyes on the model and never drawing while looking at your paper. The exact opposite of contour drawing is gesture drawing.
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