Coccinellidae is a family of beetles known as ladybirds, ladybugs or lady

beetles (preferred by some scientists) -Wikipedia

“This Way and That Way” Drawing

Session #13

So you are a ladybug walking along the bare

shoulder of a woman in a sun dress. You’re walking

just as fast as your little six legs can carry you,

which is not very fast.

You could fly across the distance of her shoulder, if

you wanted to. But you have chosen to amble.

Ladybugs are stubborn beetles.

It takes patience to cover any sort of distance on

foot when you’re a ladybug.

You move ahead with no goal in mind except to walk

along steadily and surely -– and not let an

unexpected puff of wind or a sudden movement (by

the person) throw you off your course.

It takes forever, but time is not as important as your

journey of thousands of tiny steps.

You stay with it, up and down and around --

wherever the edge takes you.

You let nothing deter you on your quiet path.

A ladybug walking meditation.

Did you know that it’s good luck if a ladybug lands

on your shoulder?

The ladybug will introduce us to a kind of drawing

that can make a tremendous difference in your

illustration.

You may have already guessed that I’m talking

about contour drawing.

If you do it right, contour drawing takes away the

angst of making a picture.

Because done right, it’s sort of a no-mind Zen

activity.

Of course you do use your mind .

But maybe not a part that you know very well.

It was the art teacher Kimon Nicolaides who said:

Draw the edge of a form without looking at your

drawing.

He believed that contour drawing was not so much a

visual perception exercise as a tactile one.

Contour, he said, was about pretending to feel the

outer edge of the form, as if you were actually

touching with your chalk or – even better -- your

fingertip.

He came up with many of his newfangled art ideas

when he was working in the army as a contour map

artist during the First World War.

And he spent the rest of his life teaching what he

had discovered.

For Nicolaides, contour drawing actually was “Step 2”

in a three punch approach to drawing the figure.

The steps began with the gesture (that we've talked

a lot about), led to a slower exploration of the edge

or outline (contour drawing) and concluded with the

massing in of the form via scribbling (in a similar

'I'm feeling it' method, like he used with gesture and

contour) to create the sense of weight, mass and

even 3-D.

He saw gesture and contour drawing not as end

goals, but as a way for the artist to experience

something new about recreating form.

He was on to something.

He died before he could finish his book The Natural

Way to Draw. So it was assembled by adoring

students from his written notes and their memories

of his studio classroom lectures and demos.

Readers may miss the enormity of what's being

shared in the book. But his students got it.

I was fortunate enough to know (and learn) from

one of them. Ruth Chatfield began her study with

Nicolaides when she was a 17 year old freshman at a

New York woman's fashion and design college. (In

these years he was also teaching his famous classes

at the Art Students' League.)

She remained his student until his untimely death in

1938, when he was only 47.

She attributed her ability to her years of college life

drawing instruction under Nicolaides.

Fifty years after the publication of The Natural Way

to Draw, an art educator, Betty Edwards, Ph.D.

came out with Drawing on the Right Side of the

Brain.

She built upon Nicolaides' ideas about contour

drawing, tying them to brain research being

conducted at U.S. universities and to her own

experiments teaching children and adults to draw,

often with some striking results.

The gist of contour drawing, as outlined by

these two pathfinding teachers, is:

The artist patiently traces the outer edge of the

subject without any preconceived ideas about it.

She drops all judgments about her work and any

stereotypical thinking about what she's drawing.

She recreates the linear path of that edge on her

pad. She does this mostly without looking at her

pad, keeping her attention on the line on the actual

figure, as she draws, as if she were running her

finger along the outline.

That's the contour exercise – nothing more and

nothing less.

You may have done something like this before in a

previous art class.

Betty Edwards says that when we draw with this

mindset, we shift our consciousness (or rather it

shifts by itself) to our brain's other hemisphere –-

and it's not the one we plan our day with.

The brain's right hemisphere is a little on the “arty”

side. One of its peculiar functions is a preoccupation

with spatial harmonies, patterns and play.

Dancers, visual artists, children and skillful

meditators are said to spend a lot of their day,

operating out of this part of their brain.

It feels pretty good there, actually.

So how do you get there?

Famously, Edwards has her students and readers

copy an upside down Portrait of Igor Stravinsky by

Pablo Picasso.

If you've tried this, you probably were surprised by

how accurate and cunningly assured your drawing of

Igor came out.

It's an exercise designed to put you “in right brain.”

When you recreate an upside down image, you don't

know or recognize exactly what you're drawing.

So you pay special careful attention to the shapes,

patterns and relationships you see there.

You become hyper-vigilant. You feel your way as you

draw, like the ladybug climbing down an unfamiliar

stem.

Edwards says that a forger will turn an original

signature he's copying upside down and copy it that

way, because it helps him to see the shapes of the

letters better.

Guess I'd better add that vocation to my list of right-

brainers: artists, dancers, children, meditators and

counterfeiters.

Heck, in all deference to Edwards and Picasso, here's

Igor.

You may have done this before. If you've never

tried, though, give it a shot.

Copy Picasso's drawing just exactly as you see it

here.

Do not judge your drawing or turn either drawing

right side up until you are done.

You're consciousness will probably shift to right brain

mode, and the results in your drawing can be pretty

uncanny sometimes.

Notice how when you draw something upside down,

the shapes of what are not there become as

important as the shapes that are there.

The empty (negative) space is critical.

In fact you need all of those shapes just to find your

way around the baffling upside down image!

Your left brain can make no sense of negative

(empty) spaces. It can't ascribe any meaning to

them. So it takes a nap.

And the right brain takes over the wheel.

It finds the interlocking of positive and negative

spaces very interesting. It loves contemplating how

everything fits.

“What begins in boredom ends in fascination.”

– old Chinese proverb

No, really. It is an old Chinese proverb.

Nicolaides told his students to be unconcerned with

making a pretty drawing of the figure.

Their job, he told them, was to focus only on “having

the experience of seeing rightly.”

He prescribed the perfect exercise for them to learn

to “see rightly”:

“Sit close to the model or object which you intend to

draw and lean forward in your chair. Focus your eyes

on some point – any point will do – along the

contour of the model. (The contour approximates

what is usually spoken of as the outline or edge.)

“Place the point of your pencil on the paper. Imagine

that your pencil point is touching the model instead

of the paper. Without taking your eyes off the

model, wait until you are convinced that the pencil is

touching that point on the model upon which your

eyes are fastened.”

“Then move or eye slowly along the contour of the

model and move the pencil slowly along the paper.

As you do this, keep the conviction that the pencil

point is actually touching the contour. Be guided

more by the sense of touch than by sight. THIS

MEANS THAT YOU MUST DRAW WITHOUT LOOKING

AT THE PAPER, continuously looking at the model.”

[The emphasis is Nicolaides’.]

“This exercise should be done slowly, searchingly,

sensitively. Take your time. Do not be too impatient

or too quick. There is no point in finishing any one

contour study. In fact, a contour study is not a thing

that can be ‘finished.’ It is having a particular type of

experience, which can continue as long as you have

the patience to look.”

When you draw this way, your eyes fixed on the

model, you take in a vast amount of information –

more than you can consciously process.

And yet you really are learning, internalizing the

structure, Nicolaides says.

“..Whether you know it or not, you are developing a

sense of proportion, which may be a very different

thing from a knowledge of proportion, but is equally

important – for the creative artist, more important.”

No, this is not a blind contour. But it is a contour drawing done froma photograph of a model for a story scene.

Your live model probably won't be upside down.

But the same principle applies as it did to the Igor

exercise. You draw better when you look more.

You're most observant of your model when you're

not also looking at your drawing.

You may not think so at first. The first 50 times you

try this your drawing is going to look weird, like you

were blind and trying to draw.

That means you're doing it right!

Gradually, if you persist in this practice, your

drawing will improve in ways that you would never

have anticipated.

When I was a child I would catch myself tracing the

contours of things around me. I would do it with my

thumb, though my thumb was at my side, barely

moving. I still catch myself doing this sometimes.

I think something inside us might be doing this all

the time, like a software program always running in

the background. It may be how we learn our way

around: Subconsciously contour-mapping our world.

It does not matter whether you're drawing a live

person or a puppy dog in a photo.

Contour – be it blind or seeing -- is the way to cut

through all of that profusion and confusion of detail.

It's the way to see your subject better in order to be

able to draw it.

It's about following all of those intriguing little

shapes, angles and directional changes -- data with

no relevance for the left brain, which processes with

symbols, memories, associations and judgments.

Contour drawing short circuits that sort of thinking.

Have you ever gone caving?

I mean real spelunking, with the sulfur lamp helmets

and ropes?

Outdoor sports enthusiasts enjoy it because

in an unexplored cave you confront the basic human

fears: of the dark, the unknown, heights, being

trapped in a cramped space....drowning.

..Not to mention all the creepy crawlies...

In an unexplored cave you often find yourself

negotiating impossibly awkward fissures and tunnels

with your body contorted into positions that it has

never folded or stretched itself into before.

Sometimes it feels like your inner gyroscope has

been smashed and you've lost your orientation to the

earth.

Suddenly you're up against the wall (of your own

fury.) It starts with confusion and indecision about

which limb or body part to move where next.

Irritation transitions into frustration and escalates

into panic as you wonder if you'll be able to wriggle

out of that position, ever.

Anger born of desperation arises. (Nobody told you

you would have to be Houdini!.)

But if you're rational and have a little faith, you can

get a grip. And calm descends.

Your heart rate slows back to normal and your

thinking settles down.

And you your body -– not you – figures out how to

solve the puzzle you've placed it in.

That's how you get through that particular passage.

And after a few of these episodes, you start to enjoy

the adventure and amazement of caving.

That's my analogy for the modality shift from left to

right brain.

If that's a little too over-dramatic for you, here's a

less extreme one:

(We're talking about contour drawing, remember):

Have you ever sat behind a driving simulator at a

video game arcade?

As you steer your make-believe Formula One racer

around sharp, make-believe bends, you shift your

weight around on your seat. Your eyes fool you into

thinking you're behind the wheel of a careening car.

Your body reacts.

It's physical.

Blind contour is driving with your eyes on the road

ahead. You veer to the left. You lean to the right.

You dip. You rise. You push forward, pull back.

After a while, the pattern loving right brain takes

over the wheel and it's fun.

Try drawing contour in “left brain” and it's not nearly

so fun. No only is it near impossible to do, but you

feel fidgety and impatient. You want to know where

this is going and how you measure up. You’re

anxious for results.

You'll stop being so antsy and anxious when you

cross over. Then you're in a world of pattern,

appreciation and relatedness.

It's what Nicolaides calls (rather mysteriously) “the

experience of seeing rightly.”

Contour drawing is like the children’s nursery song:

Did you ever see a lassie?

Did you ever see a lassie,

A lassie,

A lassie?

Did you ever see a lassie

Go this way and that?

Go this way and that way,

And that way and this way,

Did you ever see a lassie

Go this way and that?

Did you ever see a laddie,

A laddie,

A laddie?

Did you ever see a laddie

Go this way and that?

Go this way and that way,

And that way and this way,

Did you ever see a laddie

Go this way and that?

It's “this way and that way” drawing.

It's the ladybug hugging terra firma as she creeps

along, patiently covering all those changes in the

topography.

It's your pencil 'getting' all of those angles and

directions right as you go.

Contour is the heavy lifting of drawing.

When I do a full-scale illustration for an assignment

or a dummy, I'll have made a small gesture scribble

already and have my references handy –

photocopies, photos I've taken and maybe some

Google images saved to my computer desktop.

I'll use all of these to help me lay out my illustration.

I'll look through everything again. When I feel a

flicker of enthusiasm for one or more of the images,

I'll know that's the green light and it's time to hit it.

First I'll draw a frame. The “book page.” It should

roughly match the aspect ratio (or format) of the

book you envision.

It does not matter if you're drawing on good drawing

paper or scanner-printer-copy paper. Or tracing

paper. Or a sheet torn from your sketchbook.

Next, I'll draw the rectangle that will hold story text

– the “text box” in the “page.”

Next comes an informal border above the text box.

It's where I think I want art to go.

And in here, I'll recreate the gesture from my

thumbnail scribble.

But first, if I think linear perspective might play a

part a part in this illustration, I'll draw a horizon line

across the “art box” and in fact the entire page.

Now I'll dash in the gesture. Shucks, it may not have

the spontaneous brilliance of the original gesture.

But I do the best I can.

If I have a few characters interacting in the scene,

I'll try to group them all into one complex gesture,

like I did in my thumbnail.

Except this time I have a lot of references to help

me.

I'll try to include everything that plays into the scene

in my gesture. That means every prop and

background detail gets at least a mark -- a nod –

somewhere in the picture scene.

I indicate these almost as “placeholders” in the

composition. I'm laying out everything in this larger

gesture sketch. I do it quickly, without a care in the

world, in the same spirit as I did the original

thumbnail gesture.

This stage used to be the most anxiety provoking

for me – the layout, where design decisions are

made.

Oh, how I would fret. Which references would work

the best? How would I get them to work with each

other? How would I get everything to fit (the way I

wanted) on the page?

But when I learned to loosely gesture in (I'll re-

emphasize the word – GESTURE) the scene –

applying the same relaxed, nearly disinterested

approach that I used for my thumbnail scribbles – I

noticed that decisions started to make themselves.

That's always what you want, right?

I fill the space, dropping in my “gesture

placeholders” quickly – almost in one big gestural

dance.

I have the references all around me to to help me

with this.

I know not to worry about this 'drawing.'

I know it's all rehearsal because none of these lines

will really stay in the finished drawing.

It's too early.

Nothing in it is make or break.

I'm getting the gesture down, ticking off my scene

elements, keeping phi in mind as I carve up or divide

the picture space.

I'm playing air guitar here. It's fun.

The trick is not caring what it looks like.

(For the gesture, keep in mind that the stance of the

legs are often what creates the movement or the

energy in the scene. You're capturing the essential

impulse/energy of the subjects, be they animate and

inanimate.

Finally I've laid out the whole page in gestures. It's

really like one big gesture that may incorporate

several, a series, of little gestures.

I shift gears and go into contour.

I'll draw the contours of everything that matters in

the scene.

I keep my references around me where I can see

them and I draw slowly, sensitively over the gestural

“placeholder” I've just made.

I draw the edges of the forms – just like I'm trace

them (in my subconscious) with my thumb

I'm “living on the edge” now, keeping in mind the

textured surface of what I'm articulating.

I'm following up and down, going over the forms,

turning this way and that way, trying not to miss any

important directional shift.

The less you look at your drawing as you do these

contours, the fresher the illustration will look and the

less predictable it will be.

We should all be doing a little blind contour drawing

every day. It's how we train ourselves to respond to

form.

This is the hand-eye coordination you hear so much

about in art classes, and it is the crux of drawing as

most people know it. It's the 'hard part' of drawing.

But notice it's not really hard.

I haven't done a whole lot of analytical thinking or

'problem solving.'

I've not applied any strategy of typical art

instruction.

I've not concerned myself with any formulas of

anatomical structure. I've not done a lot of plotting

Or unnecessary drawing.

I've just followed the edge as if I'm running my

finger along it.

I won't say it's easy. Following the edge is a little

tricky because it takes discipline to “stay there” – in

the face of distractions.

It is the ladybug walking meditation.

The good news is that plenty of things in life don't

come easily and naturally at first (walking,

swimming, riding a bike, driving a car or dancing

Flamenco) but you can learn to do them with the

right training and persistence.

Don't forget: You have a silent partner helping you

here. Your right brain – your inner artist. She was

built for just this sort of mental 'reaching out' and

helping you find your way around space.

You'll meet her when you make contour drawings the

right way.

Your homefun:

1.) Decide which thumbnail scribble you

want to work up into a full drawing. (It

might appear in your book dummy.)

2.) Assemble your references around you.

With your reference imagery spread before you, lay

out a composition. You'll start by re-gesturing your

scene. Make your design and placement decisions

on the fly. Do the full layout in one take.

3.) Now, do the detailed outlines, drawing

over the gestures. You can erase back some of those

gesture lines if it makes it easier for you. Focus on

the edges of your forms. Don't worry about the end

result.

4.) Check out some of these drawing

videos. (Don't worry about the information in them.

Just watch them for fun.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvfhChnINhU

Portraits

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrzvB3BuujE&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiUfVKPEKxU&feature=channel

Contour drawinghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL3LiR_pvsU&feature=related

Contour drawing an apple

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7pspVdTvOU&feature=channel

Blind contour self portrait

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAJOU4byON4&feature=related

Burton Silverman is amazing to watch (Remember, it's just for fun.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iugJ8C4nCsA&feature=related

Hand structurehttp://www.polykarbon.com/tutorials/hands/hands.htm

5.) Conclude “Pirates of Penzance”

(Remember, it might be on the final.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzSTTTCOHr4&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1r_KUjRRxM&NR=1

Central Park production

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov4RMQQRRnw&feature=related

http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/pirates/web_op/pirates25.html

Thrilling conclusion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf9jXlX6l0A&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osvT1MQckSA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDlkbai_Ftk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkkn6X6c8nM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRf74-WofI0&feature=related

http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/pirates/web_op/pirates27.html

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