Contour Line Assignment due Monday 2/4

3-Part Contour Line Assignment for Monday 2/4

Part One: Blind Contour Drawings of your Hand (in sketchbook, full page for each drawing)

Sit at a table where your arm is lying comfortably on the surface. Turn to a clean page in your sketchbook. Now I want you to pose your hand. Try to be a bit creative and scrunch up your fingers and position them at interesting angles. Hold your hand in this position. With your other hand place your pencil on a clean page in your sketchbook. Now I want you to begin drawing it. But here’s the catch. You are not going to be looking at your paper. You are going to keep your focus on your hand, and do the drawing looking only at your hand. That’s the “blind” aspect to this drawing. I want you to imagine that your pencil is touching the outward contours of your palm, winding in and out of all those wrinkles, and sliding down those slopes. As your eye moves: Your pencil moves. The urge to glance down at your paper will be strong, but no cheating! Just keep your focus on your hand. The good thing about this drawing is that you have absolutely no responsibility to try and make it look “right” at all. Just let the lines wander all over the page as your eye traces the outside contours of your hand. You have 20 minutes to make 5 blind contours of your hand. Go!


Part Two: 50% Blind 50% Looking (in sketchbook, full page for each drawing)

In this drawing I want you to continue to draw while looking at your hand. But you can cheat. With that being said don’t allow yourself to fall completely back into how you would normally draw. Do an outside contour of a finger blind, then regain your positioning, and start again. So half of the time you should be looking at your page and the other half you should be drawing while looking at your hand (blind contour). You have to really slow down in order for this to work. One hand should take you at least 10 minutes. You have thirty minutes to make at least two hands.


Part Three: Finished Contour Line Drawing (in sketchbook, full page)

For this drawing you will be positioning your hand once again and drawing it however you wish. Try and remember everything you’ve learned from the last few drawings and now incorporate those ideas into making the best completed drawing of a hand you can do. Don’t worry about shading. It’s still about the contour lines. You can outline areas of shadow if you wish, but please refrain from shading them in. We’ll get to that later. Spend at least 30 minutes drawing.