This is the romantic drawing method and how the public imagines it’s always done. The artist relies on his/her observation skills alone to create the outline of a subject. In the long run, and with regular practice, outlining your drawing properly, will save you a lot of time trying to correct mistakes later on.Ī freehand contour drawing is created without any mechanical guidelines or drawing assistance. The purpose of contour drawing, in the main, is to construct an accurate borderline before attempting anything more detailed.

To coin another cliche, ‘Less haste and more pace’ should be the golden rule. Less is often more, and it’s a rare skill to be able to reduce a drawing down to its elemental lines and still carry a punch.īeginner artists are tempted to skip the drawing basics and get straight on with the fun bits.

The artist must hone their observational skills to distill the drawing down to the essential lines, drawn in the right place, to the right scale, aligned, and in proportion.Ī contour drawing can be the initial sketch or indeed, in the hands of a skilled artist, it can be the final drawing. In many ways, it’s the most important element of a drawing. Rules are there to be broken, but it does help if you know what the rules are in the first place! There are no rights and wrongs, only best practices. It all starts and sometimes finishes, with an outline. The contour line comes first and the detail comes later. The outlines are the reference points you need in order to accurately add the detail. Think of the outline drawing as the scaffold, or skeleton, upon which the form, or body, is constructed. A Contour drawing is the initial outline of an object or sketch before anything has been added.

Achieve contour definition