Continuous Line Drawing

If you need to capture the essence of something, then speed is better than accuracy so this drawing technique is perfect...and it's also great fun!

These examples show the results of two students sitting opposite each other at a drawing workshop I ran a few years ago. I gave them 2 minutes to make a drawing of each other without looking at the page and without letting their pencils lift from the paper for the whole duration of the exercise.

They had to just 'feel' their way around the subject, allowing their eye to trust that their hand was communicating the information accurately enough for the drawing to be recognisable as a person.

This technique, sometimes known as the continuous line technique or 'taking a line for a walk' technique, takes great nerve, patience, and a good sense of humour and adventure. These two students certainly stepped up to the plate with this exercise and came up with amazing results!

For fun, I then scanned the drawings and printed them onto transparent paper, which I scanned again and printed onto good quality cartridge paper and had fun colouring in all of the shapes created by the intersecting lines, making an interesting new version of the images, very like those of the fractured portraits I created.