Help! I'm Completely Lost in a Tangle of Contour Lines!I love love love doing contour drawings! Sometimes I do them verrrry sloooowly as I "feel" my way around an object, and sometimes I do them very quickly, moving from shape to shape getting all the information I can in a limited amount of time.
I knew I would be sitting on the bench in the playground across the street from the church for only a few minutes, so I did the drawing quickly - and got lost many times. I made a lot of mistakes and had to backtrack to "correct", and because I was using a pen, the corrections and mistakes are there alongside each other. If I had done it with pencil, I would have spent half my time erasing instead of drawing.
Contour drawing, by the way, is when you don't lift your pen off the paper - you just keep moving.
I'm in the mood to do some contour drawings of street scenes. The weather is great here today - strange for April. I do have a huge to-do list which includes getting groceries for our family Easter dinner. Let's see - go out drawing? Go to the grocery store?
2 comments:
Hi,
I know you've likely explained contour drawing in detail at an earlier date, but I have a question. How often do you allow yourself to peek at what you are drawing? Is it a quick peek?
Okay, two questions. Do you use other fingers on your hand as a guide?
How about some refresher hints?
Thanks so much.
Marpia - it is possible that I have not explained :) Yes, I do peek - a quick peek. I check now and then to make sure I actually do have things in the right place as I go along, but I try to look at the subject more than I look at the paper. A blind contour is when you don't look at the paper at all. Sometimes I will use that technique to really study a subject that I need to know as much about as possible before I begin to draw.
I start the drawing at any point that "Speaks" to me as an easy shape to get down on the paper, and then I just move out from there.
As far as using other fingers, do you mean to site (sight?) with - to check angles?
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