Hi, I'm Lillian Gray, South African fine artist and this is my drawing course.
Today's lesson is all about contour drawing.
A contour drawing is when we use one line to draw an entire drawing.
We never pick up our pencil. The word contour comes from the French for outline,
but I'd like to think about it as a bit more complicated.
I like to think of a mountain that has got ups and downs and with contour,
we are actually gliding up and down in our subject, following the in and outs,
and following all the little crevices. That is a contour drawing. We use one single line to
explore a subject, you never lift up your pencil. You never stop the line. If you
want to go back to a different area, you can go through shapes and draw through
them and go back and explore and analyze more.
A typical contour drawing looks like the drawing was made with a string and you can just pluck on it, and the whole
drawing will unravel. Paul Klee said that a drawing is just a dot that went for a walk and
I love that analogy. I love the fact you've got to imagine where is this dot walking,
and what is it is exploring? Meandering around. What I also like to say is that
a contour drawing looks like it's made with wire. It looks like you've actually
constructed the object with wire. Some people also refer to it as wire drawings.
Here are helpful guidelines for contouring. Number one, use an implement that permits
you to free flow a line. I find that a graphite pencil or charcoal works best.
Use an unbroken line for the entire drawing. Keep your drawing implement constantly in
contact with the paper. Don't ever lift it up. Draw through the forms as if they were
transparent. Fill the entire surface of your paper. Try and also look at the positive
and negative shapes. Vary the weight of your line and line quality. You don't want boring lines.
We want lines where I can see thickness, thin, fast, hard. I'd like to see the artist's hand in
the lines. Use continuous overlapping lines.
For our first exercise, I'd like you guys to find household objects like keys or a mug or a pen and just start drawing that. Just get into
it and then we're going to move on to more complicated things.
For exercise two, I'd like you to now move on to drawing people,
human faces. It's best to draw from life. Try and go around with your sketchbook and
draw your family members or people you know.
Try and capture them in a contour drawing
Okay, this probably my favourite exercise to teach and it's such a fun class.
We have so many laughs and it is supposed to look and feel stupid.
All right, so the entire idea is to develop spatial awareness and to really switch off
your left brain. This is called blind contour. You are now drawing blind, you are not
allowed to look at your paper. You're supposed to put your drawing plane below
your peripheral vision. You're not supposed to see your paper or where your hand is at.
You now just keep on looking at someone you do look a little bit insane doing this.
Draw them while studying absolutely every aspect of their face.
It's super important that we do this because our brain actually just starts relying on our
eyes and we switch off our understanding, so we're switching off our left brain.
We're now accessing our right brain. Another thing you need to know is that you need to
remember: Where did you draw the eye? Where did you draw the nose? Where did you
draw the hair? Because you can't look down, you need to remember where what was.
It is super exciting, it is a lot of fun. Do it with a friend. Do it with a family member,
draw your dog or your cat. draw whatever you guys can find. But draw blind. It is wonderful.
I used to freak out people a lot in Mugg & Bean doing this and I've been asked
once to leave. but it's a lot of fun.
That's it! This is our contour lesson and I hope you guys had lots of fun.
Once again, remember it's supposed to feel awkward and new.
We're trying and experimenting with new things. Remember my analogy of the
machete in the jungle and eventually, we'll have a road. Eventually, your spatial
awareness with contour drawings will be so well developed that you can actually draw a
human with a blind contour that actually looks like them, that's recognizable.
This is Lillian Gray and this is our drawing course.
I hope you guys subscribe and like our videos and be sure to follow the next lesson