Wednesday, July 29, 2020

I attempt a larger drawing

Two handed drawing, black ink and Pitt pen. Details done with dominant hand. Judith Hoffman, 2020


For Lori Don Levan, who suggested trying these larger. It seems to be hard for me to make a larger blind contour drawing. I think part of how I keep my place while drawing is to not move my hand much. But here is a two handed drawing. It's about 8.5 by 11 inches. Not large, really, but to me it is. In my left (dominant hand) I held a black pen, in my right hand I held a sanguine Pitt pen. After doing the drawing I used my dominant hand to finish with the hatching and other details. This was fun, I would recommend trying it if you haven't. I'm not that happy with the final result, but I like the scribbly mess. I tried to follow my dominant hand pen with the non-dominant one, but wasn't able to that well. It certainly short circuits your brain so neither line is very accurate. I think there is potential there, mostly as another way to get a weird wonky drawing to work on. Thanks Lori, fun idea.

Thursday, July 16, 2020

The blind contour drawing project surprise

Go By Bus. Non dominant sketch, collage, experiment by Judith Hoffman, 2020
I am about halfway through my 100 Blind Contour project. This one counts, although it's non-dominant. They are all experiments. I am working toward using more collage with the drawings, trying to keep everything loose and fast. Just to be clear - the basic initial sketch is non dominant or blind contour. But after that I use my dominant hand, looking at the drawing, to add hatching, little details, etc.

Blind contour with hatching, collage. Judith Hoffman, 2020
I am so much loving the weird distortions most of these drawings have. The appeal is that I am surprised. Normally I tend to draw carefully and these are not at all what I expect. In this group the backgrounds are 5 x 7 pieces of heavy watercolor paper. I collage on whatever I find on my work table. The faces are drawn on architect's tracing paper, then collaged over the drawings. Then I add more hatching, texture, etc.
Blind contour drawing, hatching, collage. Judith Hoffman, 2020
This one needed some white to brighten up areas, I used a Posca pen. There are more in my Flickr albums. There are albums for my friend Eileen, my husband Jim, and now for myself. More to come as I get more photos from friends.