blind continuous line
In a recent post, I stated that I had drawn an image using continuous line. I often study objects from life using a continuous line and, many times, draw the object blind, first. The above drawing was done from life in my figure drawing class a year ago spring. It took 4 minutes tops to draw. What the artist does is places his pencil or pen at a starting point on the paper and imagines that he is touching the contours of the object he is rendering. He is like a blind person feeling the contours of an object with his hands. This includes the contours along the outside edges and the cross contours that run across the object. In this case, the object is a figure. I began this drawing at the point on the head where you see a line ending in space and finished it where you see another line ending halfway up the right side of the paper. You can see hands, arms, hair, feet, folds in the clothing and the general pose of the model. Blind line is almost always distorted, but rich with information that our left brain wants to convince us we don’t need to include. If our analytical brain had it’s way, a head would always be an oval and our arms and legs would look like everybody else’s arms and legs and on and on. I tell my students that this type of drawing is invaluable as a warm-up exercise before setting to work on a drawing. It is also an excellent lead-up skill to gesturing an object because it teaches the artist to keep his pencil on the paper and flow with the form. It is surprising, if practiced daily, how quickly students improve in their drawing skills. It’s similar to pianists learning to feel their way around the keys of a piano. Many times, my students are disturbed by the distortion in their images and don’t look for the actual bend and flow of the object they have created. Blind line is not meant to be a perfectly proportioned drawing, but as the artist begins to look at the paper as he makes a study in continuous line, the drawing begins to gain in proportion. I find that my drawing enlarges in those areas where I slow down on difficult areas. In this drawing, it is evident in the hands. If you look carefully at some classic artists’ works, you may be able to identify with this type of distortion. Perhaps, they too, worked blind from time to time.
I took this drawing one step furthur for my students and traced this blind drawing off on to a piece of bristol vellum and colored penciled a finished composition out of it. I wanted them to understand that art can be created in many ways and that our creations are but steps on a journey to seeing. The resulting composition is below.
Chelsea
This post has generated some interest of fellow bloggers wanting to try some line drawings. If you would like to view more drawings that have this feel rendered by other artists, two that I follow are drawing diary and antsketch.
Leslie White 