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.

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.

Art That Was Never Finished

Arguably the very best video ever posted by The Art Assignment. Extremely interesting and moving. They have disallowed posting on Facebook, so I won't put it there.

Be safe everyone, take care of yourselves and your family.

Jim Blind Contour

Jim blind contour drawing. Jim does crossword puzzles every day. 

I am not keeping a precise count. So far there may be 40 completed drawings. And many more blind contour drawings. I don't count them because they are so quick to do, and when they aren't interesting to me I don't take them further. Of course there are some completed that I am not crazy about.

So far I have learned:

• Using fluid mat medium for collage isn't good if I plan to draw on top. Mat medium is good to glue down tissue paper. Brushed over the top it makes the tissue paper more transparent. But it repels pen ink.
• I really like the tannish papers with black and white ink. 
• I got better at the blind contours so I had to switch to non-dominant blind contour. 
• I got better at remembering how many eyes I have drawn, so have started cheating at times and adding a third one. 
• I have no idea what to do with these. I keep wanting a finished project. It's my complete-ist brain.
• Adding collage takes a lot of time and thought.
• I am overwhelmed by the social part of this - blog post, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr. I need a way to streamline.

A new subject, more blind contour

Blind contour on doodled background

Jim very sweetly volunteered to be a blind contour subject. He likes the distorted effect. Above is the first blind contour, done on a book page I doodled on years ago.

Analog blind contour

This is the analog version. Compared to the digital version below, I would like to make some changes. But of course can't.

Digital version of blind contour, done in Procreate

The blind contour was scanned and imported to Procreate where I could play with things like pen thickness and was able to erase to achieve the thin white lines. I'm trying to balance having a loose drawing with the amount of detail I like. I should have used a finer pen for the analog version. As a friend likes to say "onward."

Blind Contour Drawing Challenge

Blind contour drawing on a piece of star chart

This is part of my Eileen blind contour project, which is expanding into a larger project.

Superman's Pal, blind contour on comic book page

This current group of blind contour drawings started with 12 book pages, one piece of a star chart and one comic book page. The four here are the ones I have completed so far. I painted most of the pages with slightly watered down titanium white acrylic paint to muffle the print and images.

Blind contour, hatching, collage

Then I did the blind contour drawings with a variety of pens I had on hand. Mostly Uniball Vision Elite pens, which have black ink tinted with various colors. I am still using the photos from Eileen, but will probably branch out soon. I want to try other faces and some objects, like chairs. After doing the blind contours, I scanned all the pages and imported them to Procreate on my iPad. I can do multiple digital versions and of course one analog version. These four are the analogs.

Blind contour on book page, hatching, collage

In looking at these I think there is possibility. I like the one on the star chart, mostly I think because the eye happened to fall in that light circle. (Jupiter) But I do love dark backgrounds. And I didn't even try to add collage. The Superman's Pal is appealing to me for some reason. Lots to look at, the head floats on the page. I don't like the big white bits of paper, and that warning symbol seems pointless in that context. And the drawing and the comic book page have no theme connection. The one with the postage stamps is okay, I do like the eyes high in the face. I couldn't find anything to collage on that I liked, the stamps were the closest I could come. The last one is just okay too. But I do like the different faces, including that there is one looking away from us. And there is more room for the collage in this one. Maybe it needs a pattern in the background?

If you have thoughts, leave a comment here or on Facebook. I am always interested in other people's opinions. You probably see things differently, which can be interesting.

*"A bunch" might be more accurate. If I find something else to work on, feel I have learned what I can or just get tired of the project, I will stop. If I am loving it after 100, of course I will continue.

And yet more Zymoglyphic finds

"There's treasure everywhere"

Still working on defining Zymoglyphic. Here are the previous posts. On the wall of the Zymoglyphic Museum Jim has this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon.

This is a particularly interesting find. It's crushed aluminum, found on the street. The age, dirt and texture transforms it into something strange.

This piece of wood caught my eye because it looks so animated, like a little person. I'm very curious to see what it becomes in the museum.

Another stick that doesn't really look like a stick.

This is a piece of a tree that must have blown over in a recent storm. There was bark and moss all over the street so Jim made a nice pile of the good stuff and we continued our walk up to Mt. Tabor. When we came back down the slope we could see the tree removal team was already there. Jim can walk much faster than I can, so I said to him "rush over there and get your stuff." Jim went over and told the guy by the truck he just wanted to pick up some moss and bark. The guy said "okay." But as Jim walked away I saw him kind of roll his eyes and shrug. Very funny. I assume he was thinking "only in Portland do we get these odd balls." But Jim did recover all his bits, that's the important part. This one is about 15 inches long and 12 wide. Some of the smaller pieces with lots of moss were placed in the garden. A few years ago Jim found some pieces of a tree that had been cut down, they had ferns and moss growing on them. He brought them home and put them under a shrub. The ferns have rooted and are happily growing there. The moss didn't transplant so well, but moss is hard to move.

Here's a very nice piece of plastic. New plastic is horrible, but when weathered it can be interesting. This one looked like it had potential to be a good stand.

A large weathered piece of bone. Unfortunately I don't remember anything about finding this.

This is my most recent find - and one of my all time favorite finds. It was on the sidewalk. Can you read the photo? It's a leg from an animal statue. Really gorgeous weathering and so much potential. This is a work of art in itself.