Learning to Draw, Day 6: Pure Contour Exercise

Today I read a section on childhood drawings and then did another exercise to help me shift my perception: Pure Contour Drawing.

I put my pencil on the paper pad, scrunched my hand together, turned so I couldn’t see the paper, and then tried my best to draw the creases I saw in my hand while a 5 minute timer was running.

It yielded a strange result, but the point was to intensely focus on edges (in drawing, that is where two items come together) to the exclusion on everything else. Over the 5 minutes, the world drifts away as you get lost in the complexity of your scrunched palm.

Tomorrow: A modified version of this with the viewfinder and my whole hand.