Back to Basics

Negative space and blind contours

It’s weirdly difficult to draw what is not there. I’m not talking metaphorically (though, that is proving to come with its own challenges) - I mean, drawing the spaces between objects. What’s left undrawn, in theory, is the object. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work if you focus on the negative space and draw that rather than the thing in front of you. Or, skull, in this case.

If you’ve ever been to the Paris Catacombes (where I took the photo above) you’ll know what a bizarre, sad, and beautiful place it is. All those bones… people, stories, lives - arranged so carefully in one chamber after another, far below the streets of Paris.

Today at our Friday sketch club, the prompt tossed out was - “Skull and flower.” I was reminded immediately of the many photos I had taken down in the Catacombs and decided to ignore the ‘flower’ part of the challenge and see, instead, if I could draw the darkness in and around skull SSN.

Using a soft pencil, I was soon lost - it’s hard to turn the mind’s eye inside out so as not to not look at the shapes but rather the shapes around the shapes. That was Drawing #1 at the top of this post. Then I shifted gears and took a different approach and instead did a blind contour drawing.

In this one, I picked a point on the skull, placed my pencil on the page, and then never looked at the page again. I followed the lines and contours with my gaze and hoped my pencil down there on the sketchbook somewhere was more or less following along.

Dad loved blind contour drawings, which he said were as much an exercise in seeing as drawing. Back in 2018 when he came to visit we drew each other this way and though I have a couple of my renditions of Dad, I don’t have any of his reciprocal efforts.

He encouraged me to continue the practice and to tackle self-portraits using the same technique. He did this himself and I remember seeing many of his own scribbly distortions of self when I was thumbing through his sketchbooks.

I took his advice to heart and did this one, apparently in the wee hours of the morning…

I must have added colour after the fact (there’s no way I could have aimed and landed with the blue in the eyes without looking).

The great thing about blind contour drawings is that they are never entirely accurate - and yet, they somehow manage to capture something of the essence of whatever you’re staring at. If you’ve never tried one, go ahead! If you have, I’d love for you to share…

Thanks for reading! See you tomorrow :)