1/20 CONTOUR LINE DRAWING

Wednesday evening began with some review of continuous line and gesture drawing.  From there we discussed contour line and made drawings of tools.  Contour Line is a single, incisive line that defines the exterior volumes (outlines) as well as interior volumes of a form.  Contour line drawings should be three dimensionally volumetric and have a sense of "touch".  In other words, feel like you could grab the object.  In addition, contour lines can also identify changes in color, texture and value (weight or light).  Contour line drawings should isolate the parts working towards completing the whole.   Contour lines may be uniform in width and value (ex. drill) or for a more dimensional appearance the line may be accented with dark and light variations as well as "swelling" the line with thick and thin variations ( student drawing by Catherine Hill).

This drawing by Stephanie Mezzanatto (student) has employed accenting for a more volumetric rendering but has also used light contours to identify value variations in the surface of the objects.

Emile Rosewater (student) has used an ink pen to render his objects.  Emile's drawing bridges the two approaches to contour drawing by using a thick, uniform line to render many of the exterior volumes and a thinner, broken line to identify the interior volumes.