Drawing Lessons Portrait Drawing Painting Lessons

for Beginners Lessons

February 2013

The Beauty of Line –

Part 2

There are, generally speaking, five types of line

drawing: contour, blind contour, continuous, ges-
ture and constructive. Each type of line drawing
expresses its own language in terms of move-
ment, rhythm, proportion and density.

A line drawing is not meant to fully describe an

object’s form (whether it be a still life, landscape
or portrait), but instead serves to capture the dis-
tilled elements and characteristics of the subject.

The contour line expresses weight by using a

heavier line and, conversely, delicacy with a light
line. Perspective is also suggested with line weight: heavier lines advance while lighter lines recede.
At more advanced drawing levels you can express both bold and delicate form with a single dynamic
contour line.

An excellent exercise for developing your sense of tactile form is the blind contour drawing. Looking
only at your subject draw the contour with one continuous line. The purpose is to visually feel the
form. Don’t worry about the proportions; that will come later once you have developed your hand/eye
coordination. The blind contour should be drawn as slowly as possible – think of it as drawing a line
with a sculptural sensibility.
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My agenda for this contour drawing of a young
girl was to impart a sense of fluidity and move-
ment with a deliberate
economy of means. This meant that I had to
draw with both sureness and accuracy.

Using a ‘B’ black conté crayon on a sheet of

Canson drawing paper I first surmised the over-
all height/width proportion of the young girl’s
head and then loosely drew an incomplete ara-
besque that described the outside shape of her
hair, the far side of her face and the neckline of
her blouse.

Keeping my lines as succinct as possible I fixed

the tilt of her head and decided to inscribe a left
to right rhythmic dynamic in how the drawing
would be read. (A left to right reading is called
in sinisterium. The Italian word for ‘left’ is sinis-
tra.)
 Placing the facial features was the most
difficult part: not only did I have to get the
proportions right at the outset but I also
needed to consider the expression of the
drawing. As always I took my best guess
at the vertical placement of the brow ridge
and then checked its accuracy by sight-
ing.

Next was the base of the nose – take your

best guess first, this trains your eye, and
then measure.

The placement and arabesque of the

interstice (the opening) of the mouth fol-
lowed. When drawing the mouth you
should always establish the interstice first.
It is significantly easier to place than the
vermilion borders of the lips and, more
importantly, the interstice determines the
expression of the mouth.

Once the facial features were placed I could then

fix the gaze of the eyes and the vermilion borders
of the lips.
When you are working gesturally with a very lim-
ited time frame you need to rely on your uncon-
scious mode, the limbic, of drawing which can, at
times, produce a surprising result.

It was at this stage of the drawing that I noticed the

asymmetry in the lower left-side jaw of the face.
A part of me wanted to correct this but I decided
then and there to just keep forging ahead. And
I am glad that I did – the asymmetry creates a
sense of movement and, I think, urgency.
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The roll of money that Made carries in her ear lobe is a quixotic confluence of an exotic and innocent
past and a modern cash economy. Friendly and apparently guileless and unaffected by numerous
bottles of Bintang Made was an excellent model, I wish the same could be said for me: hot tropical
afternoons, Bintang and betting on losing boxers made it extremely difficult to concentrate on my draw-
ing.

Near the end of my stay in Bali it was while eating my supper at a local Warung (eatery) and watching
a boxing match on the television that was blaring in the corner of the room that I realized I had been
duped out of those cases of Bintang. The boxing matches that Made and I had watched and betted on
were replays that Made had seen several times before.
I simplified and stylized the locks of hair
to reinforce the in sinisteria movement and
also to reinforce the sense of a fleeting
moment.

The contour line portrait drawing relies

heavily on one’s ingrained training in the
fundamentals of drawing. You have to make
rapid decisions and rely on both your train-
ing and
intuition.