Blind Contour Self-Portrait: Wonky is Beautiful!

If you're looking for a quick way to make art, warm up, and awaken your eye-hand connection, try a blind contour self portrait!

Sit down with a small mirror, and allow yourself to fully focus on your own visage.  Slow down.  With pencil or pen on your paper, look at your face -- not at your paper!  Now, let your hand follow your eyes as they slowly travel down any contour of your face -- jawline, hairline, eyes, etc. Gradually work your way around to all of your features without picking up your pen or pencil from the paper.

The trick here is to never look at your paper, and to keep your eyes on your face, allowing your hand to blindly follow your eyes as they slowly discover the lines and shapes of your face.

It takes trust and a willingness to let go of the outcome.  You are not going to make a "pretty picture."  You are going to discover beautiful lines, curves, shapes.

And you'll be surprised at how alive some of your lines are.

Now your eyes and hand are awake and ready to make more art.  What will you create next?

Happy Creating!

Pencil Drawing Class: Your Eyes are Your Most Important Tool!

We had a wonderful first session in Beginner's Pencil Drawing class, testing out our supplies and trying out techniques.

I asked everyone to bring in a small object they loved, and we tried drawing it from memory first (my demo is below), then drawing it from observation (above).

What a huge difference using our eyes made in seeing the real form and details!

This was my object - a piece of wood that looks like an award a fairy might give a child for swiftly racing down a woodland trail.

We also played with blind contour drawing to connect our eyes and hands.  We only looked at the object we were drawing, and never at our papers.  The result?  Weird drawings, yet within the chaos were real, alive lines describing part of what we drew. Below is my blind drawing of a feather.

After the blind drawing, we were all practiced up, and allowed ourselves to steal quick glances at our papers so that we could align everything in a more organized way.

Many thanks to my students for their willingness to try new things and for their enthusiasm!

Looking forward to our next class!

Happy Creating!

Self Portrait Ideas

In my Pencil Portraits Class last summer, I demonstrated drawing your own portrait using a mirror.  You always have your own face to draw, and self-portraits are great practice.

As a warm-up, you can begin with a blind contour drawing of your face.  

Look at your reflection in a mirror, and place your pencil on your paper.  Now without looking at your paper, and without lifting your pencil, begin drawing. You can go back over lines, just don't lift your pencil from the paper, and don't peek at your paper!

Your hand's only job is to follow the slow movement of your eyes over contours - lines that define outer and inner edges of your face. 

Go slowly, knowing that you are not making a drawing, you are aligning your eyes and your hand, making connections and observations.

You can see from my blind contour drawing that nothing lined up quite right or was in proportion, but that some accurate, alive lines arose.  

By forcing your eyes to remain on your face, you allow yourself to fully drink in the nuances and details, and you practice trusting your hand to follow along.  This is a useful skill to develop.  Looking at what or who you are drawing is one of the most important steps in any drawing.

Now that you are warmed up with a blind contour drawing or two, you are ready to make another sketch, allowing your hands to move slowly, and your eyes to dance between studying your face, and checking that your lines are landing in the right place on your paper.  Look at your face 90% of the time, and steal quick glances at your paper 10% of the time.  At first it feels hard, but soon you'll trust yourself, and you'll fall into a rhythm.

I hope you give this a try!  All you need is a mirror, a pencil and paper.

Happy Creating!

Figure Drawing with Model David

My Osher figure drawing class explored the realm of blind contour drawing with model David. 

We began each pose looking only at David as we drew, not at our papers.  We followed the contours of his expressive gestures with a colorful pastel on newsprint.

After 1 minute, we changed pastel colors, and continued to follow contours inside and outside of David's form, stealing quick glances for the last 2 minutes.

Within each blind contour drawing, we found real, alive lines, no matter how wonky the drawing looked overall.

We moved on to practicing drawing the feet, working from general to specific in a 15 minute study.

With Michelangelo's Statue of David in the news, it seemed fitting for David to inspire us with this 10-minute pose.

We finished with a reclining pose for the final hour.  Below is my quick sketch.

Many thanks to model David for a his creative, thought-provoking poses!

Osher Figure Drawing with Model David

 

Once again, a scheduled model couldn't make it to our home studio for an Osher class -- this time due to work calling the model in at the last minute.  David came to the rescue and served as our model.

We started with 3-minute gestures.

As David created more abstract poses, I was drawn to expressing them with blind contour.

For this crouched, egg-shaped pose, I used blind contour exclusively.

All warmed up, we moved into long poses. David began with a standing 20-minute pose.

After a break, we finished up with an hour-long pose.

Many thanks to model David for rescuing the class again!

Figure Drawing with Model Amelia

We've been fortunate in my Osher Figure Drawing class to have a different model each week.  Last week, model Amelia brought us fresh new poses, like the one above that she held for 3 minutes.  

In our gesture series, we focused on capturing the interior structure of Amelia's body with a light-colored pastel (yellow here) for the first minute.  For the remaining 2 minutes, we added mass, contours and shadows (purple).

Using complementary colors makes the gestures pop graphically, and expresses the interior-exterior tension in the form.

We practiced drawing hands and feet in this session by doing a 2-minute blind contour in one color -- looking only at our model and not at our paper while following contours (yellow). We used the remaining 8 minutes to draw in our usual style (purple).  

Blind contour drawing, while feeling out of control and uncomfortable, allows us to tune in directly to the contours and forms we are drawing.  I've noticed that my subsequent drawings contain more life -- even if my blind contour drawing look like a pile of messy lines.

We finished with a long drawing for the final hour of class with Amelia in a meditative pose.

Many thanks to Amelia for her elegant and lively poses!
 

Figure Drawing Update: Last Class

I taught my last Osher figure drawing class of the spring semester last Friday.  We focused on using blind contours to loosen up our lines & to connect our eyes and hands with our creative model, Kathryn. 

In a blind contour drawing, you look only at who or what you're drawing, and never at your paper, so you have to let go of creating "pretty pictures" and allow the process to take you to a new place.  We began our drawings with blind contour, and after 3 minutes, we modified our approach and allowed ourselves to look briefly at our paper to register our lines in the right places. 

We used two different colored chalks or pastels for each drawing -- one color for the blind contour, and another for our modified blind contour drawing.  The process was meditative and calming once we let go of needing to create an outcome.  And, we found that it helped us to liven up our lines in subsequent drawings. This approach produced abstract and powerful drawings.

I look forward to teaching Figure Drawing in Osher's summer semester starting mid-May.  Until then, I will offer some online Friday morning live art sessions via Zoom.  You can find out more by going to the Osher at CMU Figure Drawing page of my blog.

I received a box this week stuffed with brown packing paper that I used for my drawing paper during the online class.  The camera likes mid-toned paper best.  White paper overexposes on the webcam.

I used yellow chalk for the blind contour and blue for the modified blind contour.

A longer pose drawn with compressed charcoal.

For homework, I asked students to do 3 drawings of hands & feet. These are my hand drawings, done with a focus on contour lines.