Contour Shoe Drawing

We started out by drawing common items, like a shell, which sounded easy but is alot harder to do without something to look at and base it off of.  The next exercises were drawing our hand without looking at it or the paper.  This was also very challenging, however it got much easier with more practice.  It was also very helpful to use the technique of following every line and curve of the object we were drawing instead of trying to draw a flat outline. 

We did several practice sketches of the shoe we drew.  It was alot harder to draw the shoe than I had originally thought it would be.  I didn't realize how hard it was to try to draw dimention for a shoe in order to make it look 3-D and like the original shoe.  Approaching this drawing as a regular drawing, I probably would have tried to draw the outline shape and then fill it in.  This is also what made it hard to draw this shoe because you cannot do that with a contour drawing.  Even with that set-back, I feel that i improved with each contour drawing of the shoe and otherwise.  Much improvement was seen once we could see our object in person.  I also mostly improved in the smoothness of the drawing and how lines flowed into the rest and looked less choppy than a normal drawing would.
 

Layers Pro App Vs. Oil Pastels

After experimenting with different layering and blending techniques on the 3-D shapes on both the iPad and with oil pastels I have learned alot about different techniques.  Using oil pastels, it was harder to blend the colors as gradually as you could on the iPad.  On the app you could gradually lighten or darken shades which was alot easier to control than trying to blend black or white in with an oil pastel.  The smudge tool on the app also was very convenient, it blended the colors into each other alot easier that oil pastels because there isnt really anything you can blend oil pastels together with well.  My only complaints would be that the shadows were hard to draw and it was more difficult to get precise lines with the right thinkness then it would be with regular oil pastels.  Technology is becoming more importiant in todays society and therefore it is importiant to incoporate it into art.  A big advantage of using technology for art is that it is easier to share.  It is also much easier and cheaper to create artwork electronically because you dont need to buy all the expensive supplies.  While this is an improvement in the art world, it in some ways defeats the purpose and talent needed to be a good artist.