More contour drawings. In our drawing class our instructor paired us off and we were to do blind contour drawings of each other. What?! Portraits? I’ve never had the guts to try and draw another person’s face, or even my own for that matter. Way too intimidating. But here was my chance to try. We were told to use pen, no erasing. While executing the first version, the instructor let us look down on our paper to get the proportions right. Here is the first version of my classmate, Esther:

Better than I expected...
Better than I expected…

 

 

Next, we were asked to do a true, blind contour, no looking down at the page, just trusting our hand would be able to record what our eyes saw. Here is version two:

No, her eyes are normal, it's my hands that went whackadoodle.
No, her eyes are normal, it’s my hands that went whackadoodle.

 

The goal is to simply let the line follow the eye and you can see that it has a unique quality to it. One more try, this time we were given eight minutes and asked to really slow down.

A little bit better, but still more to go.
A little bit better, but still more to go.

I enjoy the technique and find that I really do have to slow down, my eyes want to race around and figure out the best place to start, where to go next and I get ahead of myself. Our homework assignment was to do several contour drawings of ourselves. Eeek, my first self portraits. Here they are:

Egad, my chin is NOT that big.
Egad, my chin is NOT that big.

 

I had my hair pulled back, that's why I look balding.
I had my hair pulled back, that’s why I look balding.

 

 

 

Not a blind contour, I looked at the page and still got the chin wrong
Not a blind contour, I looked at the page and still got the chin wrong.

 

Okay, now I want to practice some more and get that chin right. Stay tuned.

 

I hope you have enjoyed what I’m trying to do, which is practice, practice, practice. You are welcome to use these images in your blogs, all I ask is that you credit them to Rachel Funk Heller and add a link to this site, rachelfunkheller.com  Thanks for stopping by!