Contour Line art

The French word contour means, “outline.”  

The purpose of contour drawing is to emphasize the mass and volume of the subject rather than the detail. Its objective is to capture the life, action, or expression of the subject . It is widely accepted among schools, art institutions, and colleges as an effective training aid and discipline for beginner artists.

There are several types of contour line drawings. 1. A contour drawing has a 3-dimensional quality, indicating the

thickness as well as height and width of the forms it describes. Good contour drawings use a variety of line thickness to show what is forward and what is behind. Thick lines bring the form forward and thin lines make them recede.

2. A continuous-line drawing, the artist looks both at the subject and the paper, moving the medium over the paper, and creating a silhouette of the object with out ever lifting the drawing medium off the page as you draw. The whole drawing is a continuous line.

3. A blind contour drawing is an exercise that can be rather difficult. You look at the object you are drawing with out looking at the drawing itself. These rarely look real but can be very expressionistic by show movement and force of line.

Contour line drawing with thick and thin lines:

Line drawings by Matisse, 1869-1964

Line drawings by John Lennon, 1940 - 1980

Line drawings by Picasso, 1881 - 1973

Contour line lesson unit in sequence…There will be 3 exercises we will do on copier paper to start. This project will take about 2.5+ weeks

1. One will be a class practice of first drawing a continuous contour line of your hand.

2. We will then for the fun of it try a blind contour drawing of your hand.

3. Next we will draw an image upside down. Why you may ask? To get you to look only at shape and line and to ignore the content all together.

4. The last drawing will be a project. This will be done on 9 by 12 inch paper. This will be done with ink and colored pencil. In this project you will have two choices depending on how you feel about your drawing skills and your comfort level. Samples of these projects are at the end of the slide show. Your choices are to either draw a contour line drawing of several hands showing ASL ( American sign language) You have to spell a word of 3 or more letters (school appropriate please)! Fill you page around your words with zentangle patterns or art like your first assignment. For those of you who feel a bit more confident you can try the animal contour line wrap. This is where you draw a snarling animal and wrap him like a mummy. In this exercise you will draw him in ink then go back in with pencil to shade the wrapping and use colored pencil for the eyes and mouth. Samples of these are at the end of the slide show.

Continuous line drawing of a hand

For the hand drawings…

You first need to think about the anatomy of the hand. Where do folds and wrinkles show up? Where and how do the joints of the fingers bend. Lets look at some x-rays and anatomy drawings. And next let us look at the ASL alphabet to see how we can form letters to spell a word.

The skeleton

A skeletal gesture

The anatomy of the hand

Contour line art of hands

Do not forget, there are lines where the bones meet within the hand.

Contour linedrawings:

Samples of hand drawings, (Note one only shows one hand with zentangle. I am requiring 3 hands.

The next few slides show samples of the snarling animal option to this exercise. You will only do the head of an animal. The animal you do is your choice. I have several photos you may use, or you may go on line and find one you like. Do not waste to much time making a decision, do that in one day only please or you will fall behind. Remember the lines are to follow the shape of the animal’s face.