Welcome to the Weekly Art Action for the week of March 1st!
These art actions are designed to give you something specific to do, related to drawing or nature journalling, to help you build and practice your skills, or maybe learn a new skill along the way.
This week’s art action is to do contour drawings of any simple object you have near you right now. A good subject for a contour drawing would be a mug, empty vase, candle, or fruit.
How is a contour drawing made?
A contour drawing is made by drawing an outline of the subject, keeping your pencil on the paper as much as possible, and keeping your eyes on the subject (And off of the paper) as much as possible. Unlike last week’s blind contour drawing, we may look at the paper periodically, and lift up our pencil when moving it to a new section on the drawing, but we should work at looking more at our subject than looking at and judging our drawing as we draw it.
The idea here is to get your eyes and pencil moving at about the same speed, to the point where it almost feels like your pencil is going along the edge of the object. You aren’t just drawing the outside outline of an object either. Draw any outlines necessary on the surface of or inside of the object. For example, if you are drawing a book on the table, you are not just drawing the basic cube shape, but also the key details on the surface of the cover, the pages between the covers, and so forth.
Supplies
With these kinds of exercises, you’re going to want as much room as possible, so grab a larger piece of paper or sketchbook for your exercises. You can draw with any kind of instrument, including just a regular pencil, a crayon, or a pen.
The Goal
The goal with contour drawing is to really look at what you are drawing and to draw it as you see it, no matter what your brain may be telling you. For example, if your brain is telling you that the coffee mug’s handle sticks out a certain amount from the rest of the cup, but it doesn’t look that way when looking at it from your angle, then trust your eyes more than your brain for a better picture. The main idea is to really learn to see and observe, and to draw what we see as we see it.
Share
If you’ve done this lesson, and you’d like to share your results, just post a link to your photo in the comments section. (This is family friendly, so please keep it PG, or it will be deleted! Thanks!) If you don’t have a website or blog of your own, you could upload it to a site like Flickr.com and share with us that way.
