Blind & Observed Continuous Line Contour Drawings

Our first assignment consisted of doing Blind Contour and Observed Contour drawings.  Now what are those you may ask? A contour line is a single, clean, incisive line, which defines edges.  It is more spatially descriptive, it can define an interior complexity of planes and shapes.  Outline on the other hand is flat; contour is plastic, that is, it emphasizes the three-dimensional appearance of a form. Blind contour is just what the name suggests, we were to sit at our desk, look at our object and draw without ever looking at the paper. Of course after we finished we were allowed to.  Both of the drawings were continuous line, we were to never pick up our pencils from the papers until we were completely finished drawing.  Observed Contour on the other hand is drawing while looking at the object.  The drawing was still continuous, so we would have our object (a hand in this exercise) right in front of us and draw looking at the object and switching from object to paper, back and forth.  The main points to look for is that in a Blind Contour piece, you see lots of expressive distortion, while in an Observed Contour piece, you focus more on the 3-d parts of the image defined by the contour lines to see that the object has bends and curves throughout.

BLIND CONTOUR: 

OBSERVED CONTOUR: