RECORD EVERY NUANCE YOU SEE

MODIFIED CONTOUR DRAWINGS

BEGINNING 2-D ART

graphite on paper

Before I share the Right Brain Before & After Profiles,

I'd like to show several preliminary exercises leading up to them.

These are called Modified Contour drawings.

Dr. Betty Edwards goes into great detail in her book

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain about them,

and they are a wonderful exercise to learn to see every detail in an object,

 and to record it for greater realism.

To do them  you are allowed to look at the paper occasionally when drawing,

but not the entire time.

So there will be a bit of distortion and exaggeration,

but that's the nature of this technique,

 and it's OK.

We start off with hands.

I have the kids position their hands in an interesting/difficult pose

to help hold the right brain's attention.

What's very cool is that each child has a different way of touching the paper with their pencil,

so that their personal style develops right off the bat.

The hand below is the work of senior Emily Allan.

Notice that Emily almost has a pointillist way of recording line.

And these next two are done by juniors Jazzarie Lo and Malaya Sithichai.

Jazzerie took me literally (which I love),

and did indeed record every single little edge she ran into.

And check out that lovely cuff below that Mayala has drawn.

Then we go onto shoes.

These beauties were drawn by juniors Mikaela Guerrero and Eileen Lee.

Both these girls put in a tremendous amount of effort in their renderings.

I was especially impressed with the almost gesture quality of Eileen's lines.

The kids voted her drawings as some of the best and favorites in the class.

And this sneaker by Malaya.

Know that if you try this exercise with laced shoes, 

your left brain will try to take over the drawing when you get to the laces.  

I see it all the time. 

By I warn the kids ahead of time,

and Malaya stayed in right brain the whole way thru this drawing.

Pine cones are incredibly difficult 

and force you to do deeply into right brain to even attempt to record them.

The spectacular one below was the work of Jazzarie.