Exploratory Drawing

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Classwork

Exploratory Drawing

• Make 2 pages of 3 drawn formats per page, and a third page with one larger format box on it.
• Use ink/brush, and markers alternately.
• Use Outline #2, The Principles of Design and Outline #3, Element of Line for cues to formulating your compositions.
• Use a single object, uniform in attributes like color, value, and texture.

1. Drawing Blind - Place your pen at the center of your composition, identify the center of your object with your eye, and begin. Do NOT look at the paper. Use your free hand as a guide marker to prevent your line from entering another box. Use whatever mark you need (single flowing line, back and forth sketchy line, tight circly line that makes a value,) provided your pen does not leave the paper, to create that image on your paper without looking at your paper

2. Contour Drawing - With a single continuous line (no sketchy strokes) draw the contours of your object. You may address areas of value if you feel competent enough, otherwise stick to the outer edges of the opbject

3. Cross Contour Drawing - describe the surface of your object with lines that go from one edge of your paper to another.

4. Turn the object to an unusual angle, do blind drawing of it.

5. Same angle, do a gesture drawing of it. Try to capture the weight of the object through the use of a variety of line widths

6. Keep the object in that position, crop it with your "viewfinder", and draw, with lines, the trapped spaces, or negative space

Make 1 larger box, on its own page...

7. Put a visual texture with tightly controlled, and sparing amounts of line into the entire box. (If your line is too sketchy or your pattern too dense, the effect will not work.) Using any other of your drawings, copy your "lines" to this image by making them reinforce the existing pattern in some way.

Loose Line

Tape newspaper to the wall (4ft. x 2ft., horizontal,) and tape pieces of biology paper across it in a row.Tape your inkbrush to the end of a spatula.

"Write" your name on each piece of paper.

This exercise illustrates the least degree of control you can exercise over your mark while still forming recognizable images. (You can do it with your arm, but the results are more pronounced with a longer tool -- like a broom handle, a 3" brush and housepaint!)