contour drawing – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Drawing Practice

Frustrated with my inabilities to realistically do perspective and depth, which I attribute to my lack of depth perception, I’ve decided to re-edu-um-cate myself! I signed up for an online gouache class by Lena Rivo, which has been great, as well as bought an eBook version of Bert Dodson’s Keys to Drawing. I have decided to dedicate part of each day to doing at least one of his exercises if possible. The hope is to improve my drawing skills, which are the problems behind some of my painting issues.

First exercise is contour drawing. The purpose of this is to get used to the idea of checking what you see against what you draw, and get the idea into your head that what you see is not what you think. This means looking at angles and curves as well as relationships of parts to each other. Here are my exercise examples, diving in feet first!

Next was fun – look at your hand face on – that is, fingers in your face! Close an eye. Draw!

And then, imagine a pepper. Draw it. Then get a real pepper and take a good, strong look at it, and draw. My imaginary pepper is at the top, and the real pepper, in three positions and three variations of drawing style, are below.

Very glad I chose to do this! More to come.

Time to Be a Student

I have been painting every day for the past two or three weeks. I enrolled in a couple of online courses, both of which I have totally enjoyed. However, my poor drawing skills keep flying in my face. Yes, I can render things realistically quite often, but all too frequently I tumble when it comes to proportion of multiple objects together, and a lack of ability to convey perspective.

So, after doing a bit of research, I decided to get myself some help. Not online course here, but a jan-yoo-wine book. Ebook, admittedly, but nonetheless, a book. The book is called Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson. I have other books on the basics of drawing, perspective, pen-and-ink, the right side of the brain. I just wanted something that starts out with basics and straight-forward writing. I think this will be a good choice to rediscover drawing.

I am not going to get into this book in depth here online, but I am planning to follow it and see how my skills evolve. I need to renew my knowledge, and baby steps and exercises are the key. I plan to continue to paint every day, too, so I will be a little nutso I expect – but who isn’t without people to socialize with in person or being able to go for a hike? This seems like a perfect time.

Thus, with no further ado, here are my beginning exercises from Keys to Drawing: Contour drawings of my feet and left hand.

Yeah, I really do have a big gap between my great and second toes!

The first exercise was feet – I did three but did not include the first. Dodson says, “Look, hold, draw.” Look at whatever you are drawing, observe the curves and angles, and put them down. Spend more time looking at the subject matter to see if you are getting the lines correct, not if you have a good drawing. (Ah, monkey mind!) As I progressed, things got better and I began to look at relationships of this to that, and things began to improve.

And that, she said, is what I want to do.

Lines & Shades

Once more, the house is in total disarray – the trees in the back yard have been removed or severely trimmed back. 5 trees out, 11 pruned. The guy who did it all is an artist – you can actually see the branches on the trees, and the neighbors. So what does it have to do with a post called “Lines & Shades”? All this disruption messes everything up! With such disruption – and being unable to leave the house – it was a strange sort of prison. I read murder mysteries for the most part until yesterday. It was quiet and no one was home except me and the dogs.

Back to basics. Pen and ink, contour drawing. The first one was kind of stiff, but as things moved on, it got easier and more fun. I wanted to make “lost and found edges” as well, to make things suggested, not spelled out.

I also decided to scan in a value study I did from a photo I took years ago of the Santa Monica River in the mountains nearby, on a hot, dry day. This is to remind me to follow a more traditional route in painting as my own sense of contrast – light – dark – is not the best. As you can see, I did it some weeks ago, but I hope to make it into a watercolor in the not too distant future. The hard part is finding the right color for the sandy river bottom, but I have an idea . . .