Drawing Exercises

1. Continuous Contour Line Drawing

2. Blind Contour Eye Drawing

3. Gesture Drawing

4. Negative Space Drawing

5. Value without Line Drawing

• Create a drawing without lifting the pencil off the paper

• Helps artists focus on the line

• Imperfections = Beauty

Continuous Contour Line Drawing

Blind Contour Eye Drawing• Look at the subject

matter you are drawing, but not at your paper

• Helps your eye and hand work in unison

• Do not lifting the pencil off the paper

• Abstraction = Success

Gesture Drawing

• Draw as much information as you can in a short amount of time

• Do not waist time erasing; instead add darker lines on top of softer ones

• Focus on what is being drawn as much as the drawing itself

Negative Space Drawing• Draw the space around

the object (negative space) rather than the object itself

• 1st use solid marks to create very flat image

• 2nd try making the negative space more realistic

• Do not draw a single line, instead use shading to build the drawing up

• Create various degrees of lightness and darkness

• You can use an eraser

Value without Line Drawing

Increasing Darkness

• Pressure

• Crossing lines

• Lines closer together

Still Life Drawing

Still Life

Still Life

• An artwork that shows mostly inanimate objects

• Inanimate = things that cannot move or live

• Artists use this technique to become better in their skills of drawing and most importantly seeing

Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1599

Vincent van Gogh, 1888

MC Eschur, 1943

Pablo Picasso,1924

Roy Lichtenstein, 1972

Contour Line Drawing

• Start with soft pencil marks

• Zoom in and draw big• Try using shapes that

you see in the objects• Complete entire

composition before adding heavier marks and details to a single area

Value

Value

• Varies degrees of lightness and darkness in an artwork

• A good artist will use these degrees of value to give an artwork depth

Value vs Contour Line

Value Scale

• Using a pencil and ruler, draw 5 x 1’’ x 1’’ squares

• Add value to your artwork, with various degrees of lightness and darkness

• Choose from tonal, crosshatch, or linear, techniques

• Look closely at values and blend what you see

Today’s Steps

Hints

• Draw what you see from your personal perspective

• Constantly compare your drawing with the objects in the still life

• Spend equal time looking at your drawing and the objects in the still life