Contour drawing........

 

........how I love, thee! 

 

 

I'm pretty new at this exercise but it is so fun and liberating.  Normally, when are trying to draw a persons portrait you are trying to make it look exactly like that person with contour drawing you are concentrating on getting the "essences" of the person.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The idea is you draw with one continuous line, you do not lift the pen or pencil off of the paper.  So, along with trying to replicate the line you are, also, having to figure out how you are going to get from say the nose to the eye to the hair and back to the other eye!

I recently purchased a new book titled " Expressive Figure Drawing" by Bill Buchman, which I think is a great book!

Here's are a few of his insights:

• Drawing is a simplification process, an approximation.
• Drawing awakens our vision.
• Drawing is a way of thinking-or, better yet, many ways of thinking.
• Drawing is not drawing. Drawing is seeing.
• A drawing can make an idea, a conception, or a feeling visible.  It can do all three at the same time.

In a couple weeks I'm taking a live model drawing class and I'm looking forward to that.  My goal is to draw with more expressively and with fewer lines and detail.  If one wants to grow and get better at something the answer is always the same.......practice, practice, practice!

A young man I've know for years is a cartoonist, a good one!  Cartoonist understand simplification and all the rules of drawing.....they understand very well how to...."make and idea, a concept and a feeling visible".  I so admire that ability.