Roger Conlon
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  • Teaching - drawing
    • Drawing advice & quotes
    • Learning from masterpieces
    • Learn to Draw exercise sequence >
      • 1 Touch self portrait
      • 2 Feeling the form
      • 3 Wrapping the form
      • 4 Creating volumes with contours
      • 5 Contour systems - bracelet shading
      • 6 Tracing v copying
      • 7 Follow a leader
      • 8 Oval and Axis - constructing the figure
      • 9 Pattern : mapping and negative shapes
      • 10 Measured drawing
      • 11 Dark and light - tonal patterns
    • Drawing the Head >
      • Rotating basic form
      • Child's head demo
  • Teaching - painting
    • Painting advice & quotes
    • Oil Paint >
      • Materials to start
      • Colour mixing : hue, tone, intensity
      • Limited palette tonal painting
      • Oil glazes
figure drawing

    Touch self portrait

1.    Look in the mirror, not at your paper.

2.    Place your pencil on the paper and as it touches, imagine it is touching what you are looking at.
It will take a little time to convince yourself but look in the mirror and imagine as you press the pencil on the paper that you are touching somewhere on your face.

3.    Move your eyes along the surface of your face and follow your eyes with the pencil line on the paper – slowly- as if you are touching it with the pencil.

You might imagine your eyes and pencil are like a climber moving across a gigantic sculpture like Mount Rushmore. Or you could feel the pencil tip crawling like an insect across the ups and downs of your face.

 DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR PAPER AS YOU MOVE THE PENCIL

If you see your drawing hand moving you are not doing it correctly
When your line runs out  look -briefly- at the drawing to find another starting point.

Do not:

-           talk
-           make marks for dark shadows, remember you are 'touching' the surface so light and dark are not important to you . You might find the edge of a shadow useful as that will be reveal the way the surface changes
-           worry about what the drawing looks like as it develops. It is just a drawing.

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