You wouldn’t draw the bruises, wormholes, or scratches. For example, if you’re drawing an apple, you would draw the round shape and a stem. Is it a landscape or portrait, naturalistic or abstract, a painting, photograph, sculpture, or something else? Here are a few to get you going, but the possibilities are endless. Pure contour drawing is the simplest form of contour drawing and only consists of the most basic outlines of the shapes you’re drawing. Varying how long you draw encourages you to rethink your approach to capturing the whole image! Find Your Contour InspirationĮxplore the entire PMA Collection online and find an artwork that speaks to you. What are the differences? Keep it going and mix it up, adjusting and playing with the amount and sequences of time (2 minutes, 5 minutes, 1 minute or 5 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute or any combination that works best for you). Compare your drawing to the original image, then do another contour drawing for 2 minutes-less time, so you should be working more quickly-and compare it to your 5 minute drawing. Notice how they all have different perspectives and approaches-it’s so interesting to see how others approached the task!ĭo the contour drawing for 5 minutes as outlined above.
Walk around to look at everyone’s drawings. If you did your drawing with friends or family members, try placing your contour drawings face-up around the room. What do you think? What was easy? What was difficult? What route did your eyes take to draw this image? Look at your drawing and compare it to the image you based it on. Take 5 minutes or so to create your first contour drawing (put a timer on your phone if it's easier), and then pencils down. No peeking! Your hand will follow where your eyes go. Keep your focus on the artwork you’re inspired by, looking closely at the lines in the image. Contour drawing, is an artistic technique used in the field of art in which the artist sketches the contour of a subject by drawing lines that result in a. The two most important things to remember are: use one continuous line and no looking at your paper as you draw. Some famous artists who have used contour drawing include Alexander Calder, Egon Schiele, and many more.Īll you need is a pencil and some paper! Any size paper will do, but sometimes bigger is easier at first. It helps us to look closer at an image, and especially draws our attention to the lines within an image. The use of the word contour suggests that more emphasis is given to rendering mass and volume than in an outline drawing, and. Contour drawing uses one, continuous line to capture what you see. contour drawing, version of outline drawing, in which the artist, looking closely at the contour of an object, transfers it in one continuous line to paper without looking down to see what he is doing, except when he needs to place an internal feature such as an eye.