Extended Blind Contour

Artist Statement

This piece started out as four different blind contour drawings done in pen on the same piece of paper. The first one I did was based off of someone in the google meet and turned out kind of small. Then I turned the paper the other way and drew another one based off of a different person in the class. I tried to make that one a little bigger. Then for the third one I drew the ribs of a skeleton that was in the classroom. When I was done with those three I decided to add one more so that more space on the paper would be filled. Then I chose colored pencil to add to my blind contour drawings. I tested out a few different ways to use them on a different sheet of paper before choosing my colors. I went with primary colors only, using the warmer colors for highlights and the cooler colors for the shadows. One classmate that I drew was wearing a blue mask so I just colored that all blue with some yellow to show highlights.

The materials other than colored pencil and pen that I used were gouache and a white paint pen. After I used the colored pencil, I darkened some of the lines of the contour drawings and added a few lines to the ribs to show depth. Then I painted around all the drawings with navy blue gouache, leaving a little bit of white space between the drawings and the paint. Once I had finished that, there was still a lot of negative space so I filled it in with a few simple shapes using the white paint pen.

One way I experimented with processes was when I used small messy lines with the colored pencils and tried different ways to use primary colors. I tried to arrange the blind contour drawings in a more balanced way by turning the paper for each one. The white paint pen on top of the dark background added some contrast and patterns. My project evolved as I decided where to put colors on the drawings to show highlights and shadows and figured out how to fill the paper better. My next steps could be to do more blind contour drawings because they are fun.