Wild Animals

This my blind contour project. For this project I had to draw animals from models, AKA realistic toys, using the blind contour technique. This technique means that the artist looks only at their model and has to create a drawing of the model, but without looking at the paper or lifting up their pen. This technique is often used for warming up, or to prevent the artist from drawing what they think the subject should look like versus what it actually looks like.

I started out by drawing many different animals on a page. I drew them with thin pens or thin tipped sharpie. I drew anything from crabs to wolves, from all different angles. Eventually, I ended up deciding on the moose, two gorillas, and a bear. I thought these looked the best and were the most interesting. I did not like my bears body, so I cut it off into a square. I also cut out the gorillas and moose into tighter squares. I thought they looked kind of like stamps. I painted each of these with water color. I did not want them to be too precise, but to generally have the right colors. I then went over all the original lines with a thin point pen.

I really like all four of these but needed some way to tie them together. I also liked the way the looked on the white background. I decided to take a small piece of watercolor paper. I had a couple ideas, like making a jungle, or just doing splatter paint. I tried some of these out and picked my favorite. I made this one by pouring water onto a piece of paper, an unusual way of doing water color. I think dipped my paint brush in the pure color and applied it within the large spot of water. This caused the colors to mix in a really cool design. I added some more heavy pigments on some areas and left other areas lighter. I then shook my paper out. This dried it some and spread out the color randomly. I then glued my animals on the paper.