wagonized

Blind Contouring

 Drawing without ever looking at the paper is a humbling but liberating endeavor.  I have started a new sketchbook (which means I now have four going simultaneously) and have been blind contouring exclusively -- just looking at things, people (Nora, notably!) and focusing on the subject, not the drawing. I have already covered pages -- and here are a few.  They've all been done in a couple of minutes -- since I don't know yet how to make a blind contour drawing last.  Pilot V5 pen.

In the habit of cross-hatching the heck out of everything

I usually draw dogs with a pencil, just to convey the softness better.  But I also like tackling a drawing knowing there is no erasing possible, that whatever mistake was made, it remains.  I noticed as I was cross-hatching the ear, that I had not done something like this is a while.  Pigma Micron 05 in Moleskine.  Original Weimaraner by 8 Tea West on Flickr.

Busy hands

One of the things I draw in Nora's Moleskine (the "babylogue") is what she likes playing with.  I am not sure where this little rattle came from.  I photoshopped the gutter of the Moleskine out a bit.  

Finger puppet rabbit

I was watching the movie Moon by Duncan Jones while drawing the little finger puppet rabbit sitting on my knee.  

HB pencil in sketchbook.   

Birk-ing and blind contouring

I have drawn a couple of mediocrities (my former choice of noun was “atrocities” and it just sounded as though I was pathetically fishing for reassurance) lately.  And because I don’t have enough shame nor enough material to post, I am owning up to them. One is a scary blind contour drawing of Nora, who was playing with a rattle, and the other is – yet again, for the nth time – one of my old Birkenstocks lying there by the bed one evening.  When Nora is older and leafs through her big Moleskine “babylogue”, hopefully she will not hold too much of a grudge, as my blind contour drawings of her have been disturbingly freakish. 

I attempted to photoshop the gutter out on both drawings, hence the strange fuzziness at spots.

Pilot V5 in Moleskine.