30 SAL Challenge: Cross Contour

Today is the 10th day of our 30 Day Challenge. We are 1/3 done! Sunday is observational drawing day, so I’m sharing an exercise from school, with a twist.

Contour Lines

“Contour” is the French word for outline, so contour lines are, quite simply, outlines. Contours describe the shape along the edges of a thing. Below is an Egon Schiele drawing using contour lines. You can see how the lines describe the contours around the edges of the form, the defining edges of the facial features, and the outlines around the fingers.

These outlines describe what the shapes do around the edges, but inside those edges, with the exception of those tiny hatches at the knuckles, there is only blank white, just as outside the boundaries, there is also only blank white, so we don’t really know what happens there. Without a mark here and there to cue us in to what’s happening in the expanse of whiteness, the drawing remains flat.

This is where cross contours become useful. Cross contours describe the form like outlines do, but they do it in the middle instead of at the edge. When I learned cross contour in school, we did projects like this apple below, and I wondered what the heck this had to do with anything, because I didn’t see any good drawings that were like this, and although it had that nifty 3D effect, I never wanted to draw like this again.

It took me years to realize that I actually like cross contours. They do a lot for a drawing, and they’re interesting. Though they have nothing to do with shadow, making lines across a surface does make that surface look darker, so they most often appear as marks in shading, like in these pillows by Albrecht Durer.

Here, they add shadow and tone for the face on our money to look less flat. See how the collection of lines make the face look 3D?

Cross contours can be careful as in the Albrecht Durer, or mechanical, as in the Benjamin above, but cross contours are also present in dynamic loose gestures like this self portrait by Kathe Kollwitz.

When artists paint, they sometimes follow cross contours with their brush stroke, so each stroke adds information about value, color, and surface topography, all at the same time. Painting this way adds a feeling of volume and mass to the form. And, I’ll say it again, it’s fun.

Compare the painting above with the same painting I manipulated in photoshop. I took out the color (sorry) but I also took out the curves. It still has light and shadow to describe the form, but without the descriptive information from the cross contour brush strokes, can you see how the portrait got more flat?

So cross contours help a two dimensional rendering be more three dimensional, and sculptural. There are some fascinating cross contour drawings made by sculptors. Sculptors have an inherent focus on space, mass, volume, and dimension. Below are some cross contour drawings by Henry Moore, an artist known primarily for his sculptures.

So a cross contour can have a lot of different styles, but here’s why they’re fantastic in a drawing: they make a flat object look dimensional, and it doesn’t take a lot. Let’s go back to that apple at the beginning. Here’s an outline (contour):

And here’s cross contour.

See how just a few lines interrupting the white space give it a sense of form and volume?

Cross Contour Challenge

For your challenge today, draw something round and something flat (an apple on a table, for example) with cross contours. If you prefer not to draw but instead work in photography, consider taking a photograph and drawing cross contour lines on the photograph. Or, maybe you have another idea for how to use lines to express the form in three dimensions. Unlike the isolated apples above, focus on putting some line in all areas of the paper. For instance, if you’re drawing an object on a table, remember to indicate the flatness of the table, and the wall behind it. Don’t leave any surface without description (see Henry Moore above).

You know what to do

Set a timer for 20 minutes. When the timer chimes, continue if you wish, but 20 minutes is a win.

Post your work to Padlet for January 5-10.

PADLET JAN 5-10
https://seattleartistleague.padlet.org/SAL/fl2cnuio5g0ocsfp

Post your work to social media with the tags #30sal & #seattleartistleague. To find more followers for your page, you can cut/paste these tags and add them to your post: 

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