1. Gesture and Contour Drawing!
Unit 1
Gesture and Contour Drawing!

2. Types of drawing and line
Gesture – Captures interiors/Flow/Motion
Blind contour – tests memory, outlines
Line contour – detailed outlines
Cross contour – interior and exterior shapes through lines
Hatching – building interior and exterior volume through tight and widely spaced lines

3. Kickstart with some gestures
Gesture drawing is exactly what it sounds like.
You make sweeping gestures in a sketchy quality to capture the basic movement or form of your subject.
Great way to capture motion or the “core” of your topic.
Heavy lines add weight and solidity, lighter can make connections and add to details and highlights.
Think of the first big chops a or sculptor woodworker used to chop out the general shape of their piece.

13. With charcoal or pencil
Line Quality:
Should be tangled and overlapping
should be spontaneously and energetically stated
May look like a scribble
It is not a meaningless scribble
All lines are based on observation

14. Break the figure into some basic shapes
Cylinders - legs, arms
Boxes - upper and lower torso, head
Spheres – head - hands

15. Paying attention to the form Blind contour line drawing
Careful observation drawing without looking at you pen or paper
continuous line
develops hand and eye coordination
improves concentration
removes judgment of what you are seeing
allows you to consider edges
consider direction
consider open and closed form
recognize repeated shapes and rhythms

21. 90/10 drawing 90%not looking 10%looking to catch finer details.

22. Tips for contour drawing
Track your subject with your eyes.
Wherever you are looking, your hand should be producing a line.
As your eyes and hand should be working simultaneously .
This isn’t about an accurate or even “good” drawing

23. Sighted Contour Line Drawing
Draw slowly and deliberately NOT sketchy
Contour line drawings are made up of only lines, NO shading
Lines should follow the contours of your still life object(s)
You can modify the line quality, thickness of the line – darker lines for major lines, lighter lines for soft implied edges
A contour is the line which defines a form or edge – an outline.
Following the visible edges of a shape.
The contour describes the outermost edges of a form, as well as dramatic changes of plane within the form .

25. Cross contour
Cross contour lines are drawn lines, which travel, as the name suggests, across the form.
Cross contours may be horizontal or vertical, as on the right side of the example, or both.
Often, in more complex forms, cross-contours will be drawn at varying angles.

41. SHADING
Shading is used in drawing for depicting levels of darkness on paper by applying media more densely or with a darker shade for darker areas, and less densely or with a lighter shade for lighter areas.

43. Cross-Hatching
There are various techniques of shading including cross hatching where perpendicular lines of varying closeness are drawn in a grid pattern to shade an area. The closer the lines are together, the darker the area appears. Likewise, the farther apart the lines are, the lighter the area appears.
Light patterns, such as objects having light and shaded areas, help when creating the illusion of depth on paper.

44. Cross Hatching
When “Hatched” lines are placed at an angle to one another, it is called cross-hatching.

45. Hatching
artistic technique used to create tonal or shading effects by drawing (or painting or scribing) closely spaced parallel lines.
Artists use the technique, varying the length, angle, closeness and other qualities of the lines, most commonly in drawing, linear painting and engraving.

49. Silhouette
A silhouette is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single color, usually black, its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the whole is typically presented on a light background, usually white, or none at all. The silhouette differs from an outline which depicts the edge of an object in a linear form, while a silhouette appears as a solid shape.