HOMEWORK 2: CONTOUR

Statistically, when people draw from observation, most people naturally look at their drawing 90% of the time, and spend only 10% of their time looking at the object they're drawing. If you're drawing a bowl of fruit, you need to look at the bowl of fruit, and look at it a lot. Otherwise, your drawing won't be an exact likeness of the bowl of fruit.

In an effort to try to restructure the tendency toward looking at our own drawing paper too dang much (and not enough time studying our object), we are going to do an exercise called "blind contour" drawing...

Look at these three drawings: a chair, a face, a hand.

They're pretty awful, right? Well, not for blind contours. See, the artists didn't look at their own drawings AT ALL. They just looked at the objects the entire time. This exercise forces you to slow down and really study the object, without concern for what the final product looks like. The end result will look silly, but it's all for the greater purpose of training yourself to focus on truly seeing the object.

Your homework:

In your sketchbook, in PEN, draw 5 blind contour drawings, one each of the following: 
1) your own hand
2) a chair
3) a lamp
4) keys on a key ring
5) a bottle of your favorite beverage

The rules:

- Spend about 5 to 10 minutes on each one.
- Go SLOWLY.
- Try to draw surface details like bumps and dips and creases.
- It's easiest if you don't lift your pen (if you do, just put it back down without looking and keep drawing).
- pen = can't erase! yikes!
- Don't look at your drawing until you're finished!

Due Wednesday, January 21.