Cat contours

These are contour drawings, where you look at the subject but not at your paper. It feels like you're drawing blind in a way, even though you're staring at your subject. If you've never tried it, I highly recommend it (Nicolaides has a very good description of how to do it; I think it's one of his first lessons, maybe even the very first one; sorry, I don't own the book), if for nothing else than for the amazing revelation that lines drawn this way are somehow more alive. These four I've posted here were from a set of perhaps twenty that I did within half an hour or so. It was great, because the cats on my bed shifted slightly every five minutes or so. To me, there's something of the Chinese elegance of line that often happens with contour drawing, and especially with cats!

The Husband and I also got into the habit of doing quick contour drawings while waiting at restaurants, etc., for the sheer entertainment value of it (when a drawing comes out looking really funny, which is very often!). It takes a lot of willpower not to look until you decide you're done (which can be in 15 seconds or an hour or whatever), but when you see the fascinating results, you realize it's worth it. (In Nicolaides' method, you are allowed to look back at the paper when you're done drawing a given curve, etc., only in order to put the pencil back onto the page in a different spot, then it's back to looking only at the subject. It's also fun to do it without ever looking back at the paper until you're totally done; this leads to extremely weird but cool drawings. Read up on it in Nicolaides' book or another book or online for a better description.)

These are actually just very light, thin pencil sketches in a sketchbook done late one evening. For them to show up at all on the computer after I scanned them, I had to do a pretty extreme contrast adjustment. They're now nicely visible on the monitor, but you can see right through the page to sketches on the other side. It also makes it look like they were done in ink, which upon seeing them, I wish I had.  Oh well.

The photo is Cleo (all black) and Miss Lemon. They are two girls (ages 1 and 3) who are often caught in compromising positions around the house.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com