Day 21: S’s and contours

I didn’t blog yesterday but I did draw using s-curves, the best of which is below.

Not earth-shatteringly great but it taught me how to look for another shape in things. As a result I’ve been seeing S shapes in everything today.

Tonight I moved on to contour lines.

It’s essentially moving on from the shapes learned from doing cylinders but using the contour lines as guides to shape and inclination.

For example if I showed you this:

It doesn’t look impressive. It’s two dimension and static.

But it look what happens when I add contour lines....

Suddenly it’s not just looking more three dimensional but it’s more dynamic. It’s got attitude.

Moreso when we add shadow and therefore a bit more form....

That’s pretty much where I went mad drawing wee contour men to fill in the gaps in today’s page!

I must admit when I was doing the contour lines on the pipes I didn’t get the point of the exercise. But when the legs came into it it was one of those “aha!” moments!

Just to reiterate the book I’m using for the exercises I’m doing to begin with is this one:

You can draw in 30 days by Mark Kistler

Its really good. Literally assumes you can draw at all before you start.