Contour Drawing
Monday October 1, 2007
What is pure contour drawing? Chances are, you already do it, as it tends to be the instinctive approach to drawing, representing visible edges with a line. This pure contour tutorial explains what's involved.
Related Articles:
Wire Drawing Exercise
Blind Contour Drawing
Gestural Drawing
Comments
Wonderful article. Even though you say it is “mis-shapen”, my favorite example is the one you give for the “limitations of contour drawing”, with the hand and ball. Very elegant and leaves room for the imagination. It reminds me a lot of the drawing style of Kosuke Fujishima.
Wow, thanks Anthony! I’m not sure I deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Fujishima, but I’ll take the compliment. Its an interesting point, actually – I do tend to overwork a lot. Sometimes I’ll deliberately go for a ‘Zen’ watercolor feel, but more often I do complex, intricate surfaces. I think for me it is sometimes a cop-out – with a busy drawing, you can get away with lazy observation, reworking…. with a simple drawing, you have to really be decisive.