Oxford Summer School - Blind contour drawing

I love drawing the hand with the students. Hands are kind-of the ultimate in drawing. If you can draw your hand without it looking like a bunch of bananas, you can draw anything. We jump into the deep end with doing a blind countour drawing of the hand. This means that the artist doesn't look at his paper at all, but slowly draws all the contours and edges without lifting his pencil. The results are usually a very strong graphic image. 
Elizabeth Crowley explored her hand drawings by creating a concertina book.
She combined the drawings of various hand poses by willing models, with layering and collage using incidental text. This is an art form she has worked with, but her blind contour drawings were something new.
She'll complete the book at home.

Combining Text and Image:
Oliver Leech had begun a poem written by his son about a wren. His first rough which he brought with him was in Italic but he wasn't very happy with it. Monoline and pointed nibs are new to him and so is pen and ink drawing. He tightened up the bird / text image and ended up with some totally different ideas to work on. He will probably re-do the piece leaving a small even margin of white around the wren.

I think the wren project really explains my vision of combining text and image very well with related textural patterns or strong stylised shapes.

Barbara Williams was justifiably pleased with this drawing of her hand which she did straight after doing a blind contour drawing.
(Apologies for the quality of some of the photos - I didn't realise that the light was cast by tinted windows until after summer school, so couldn't re-take the pics.)

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