Blind Contour Drawing of Vie Sunrider by Ilka Hartmann

I am now in my 22nd hour. It is interesting that when I started the project I was at a loss about what to draw and now I want to draw so many things. I used to not want to do it and regarded it as a chore. Now it is more of an adventure. I am so interested in patterns. Probably relateded to my earlier work in fabric repair. But they are often so representative of humans. We seem to cover ourselves in them and as such they do represent humanity. I am going to try to post the source photo here. It is a photograph by Ilka Hartmann . . .forgive me Ilka I do not have your permission. But oh so beautiful. Please visit her site by the way.

Blind Contour Drawing of Closet

For fun I think I will post some of these . . . might as well join the masses.

Blind Contour Drawings

I have seen a lot of this work on the web and what I noticed was that the artists were generally quite self satisfied with their work. The project (assignment) is usually described as looking at a subject and making the drawing of the same without looking at the subject. The number of assigned repetions vary. I decided to do the project myself and being somewhat masochistic I decided to do thirty hours as recommended by one teacher. I used a timer and tracker to keep myself honest and over 2 months have produced over 300 drawings . . .and racked up about 20 actual hours. The project is difficult for me but rewarding as I have learned to see and appreciate minute details that I have always missed before. I am much more patient in the looking aspects of drawing.

Further, I have realized that humans really only see in abstraction. They take all the little abstract afferemena and organize it in their brains to produce a useful meaning. Ya I know this is likely not a new finding.

I am posting a Blind Contour Drawing of a Geisha and a cat, taken from a historical drawing of the same, artist unknown. I dont think there is enough resemblance to violate any copywrite . . . but well anyway. As abstract as this is . . . it is beautiful to me.