From-the-top-mod-contour-review

June 19th, 2003

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Your June 19th, 2003 YouCanDraw.com
Communiqué
Back to the Archives

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Howdy all,

Big upload today! It's the latest in the Flash Interactive Lesson series. As you
might recall we're re-hashing the most salient lessons from the Foundations of
Drawing section as we make our way through the entire book. Since I'm a certified
"Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" (DRSB) instructor, well that'll be what
you get - certified DRSB instructions :-).

It's important you've worked your way through the "Understanding the Picture
Plane" Lesson - it'll be harder to make sense of this one if you haven't yet. (You
can find that in the Archives.)

Listing the five skills of drawing:

1) the perception of edges - today's focus
2) the perception of spaces
3) angles, perspective, and proportion
4) light and shadow
5) the gestalt

Summary of today's lesson

In "Understanding the Picture Plane", you were introduced to the just plain quantum leap of, well, the picture plane. In this lesson you drew an outline drawing of your hand on a small sheet of clear plastic.

The beauty of the picture plane is that it offers a way to flatten the three dimensional real world into a drawable two dimensions. This is a step trained artists have mastered either consciously or unconsciously but without the ability to make this dramatic leap, drawing remains difficult. Without actually doing this exercise, explaining it is also very difficult. There's really no better way however to internalize the impact of drawing on a picture plane than by doing it.

(Click on the above illustration for the Flash Lesson)

Note: Due to the way the Flash Lessons are constructed and due to limitations within Flash technology itself, the links contained within the interactive lesson point to the online book (links of the "http://www...." type). All the same pages those links aimed at are within the book in front of you.

For your convenience, the links contained within the Flash Lesson "Modified Contour Drawing" are repeated in their order of appearance within the table below. (Specifically the right half of the table - just read the headline for each column :-) Further, they're linked to the book as it sits on your computer - they won't open a browser and you don't need a web connection to open them. What a deal :-) If you want to see if any new additions have been made to the online page, go for it and click on the links within the Flash Lesson or click on the links in the left hand column below. If you want to access those pages rapidly, refer to this list:

On-line, out-there-on- the-Web - where you can find updates (if any) - click on any of these and a web browser will open.	Click on these links and you'll be whisked to these pages right within your book
Pure Contour/perceiving edges info page	Pure Contour/perceiving edges info page
The Archives	The Archives
Understanding the Picture Plane	Understanding the Picture Plane
Lesson 4	Lesson 4
Lesson 6	Lesson 6
Lesson 7: the Viewfinder	Lesson 7: the Viewfinder
Template for building a format.htm Light logic	Template for building a format.htm Light logic

Modified Contour

In the Modified Contour Flash Lesson (today's focus) you make the move beyond just being familiar with the picture plane but to incorporating it into your regular drawing repertoire - so eventually you can do away with a physical plastic picture plane. In this Lesson you'll also learn about the importance and utility of specific things like keeping one eye closed as you draw close up objects, using cross hairs and vertical or horizontal borders for reference. You'll also review how to format and tone your paper, as well as how to "set a ground".

Screen shot of the Modified Contour Flash lesson

Lastly you'll get a glimmer into how shadows and highlights are just shapes too as you get set up to learn the second skill of drawing: recognizing negative spaces.

Yet another screen shot of the Modified Contour
Flash lesson

So here's your copy (it's included in your purchase price) and I'd love it if you gave me some of your impressions, suggestions, and criticisms or compliments on how to make it better etc. ....

Flash Interactive Lesson: Modified Contour

A very useful product

Lastly, you can buy a portfolio/package of all the different ready made picture planes, viewfinders, templates, drawing supplies, etc. you might need for formatting from the DrawRight.com site (Betty Edwards home site):

http://www.drawright.com/portfoli.htm

Enjoy! These are lot of work to make - but well worth the effort - since they're
for you :-)

Warmly,

Jeff

Kasbohm & Company's

YouCanDraw.com

e-mail: jeffkaz@YouCanDraw