Elephant Contour, Scribble, And Erase Sketch

These sketches were part of Carla Sonheim’s Y is For Yellow course that I’ve been participating in. It’s a really wonderful DIY online program that you can work through at your own pace. I signed up when I was feeling a strong pull to make art but felt stuck, not knowing what I wanted to make. I’ve found in the past that a great way to get unstuck from the blank canvas mud is to take a course and just follow someone else’s instructions. That way there are no decisions for me to faff about, and the doing gets me loosened up enough that my own creative ideas soon start flowing.

These sketches were a 3-step process:

1. Do a contour drawing.
2. Scribble-colour it in.
3. Use an eraser to lift highlights out of the sketch.

I took photos along the way because I was so pleased with my simple contour drawings that I almost didn’t want to proceed with the rest of the exercise! Simple contour drawings are rather precious to me because I find them hard and tend to struggle to keep them simple.

This was the most fun! I loved how quick the sketches were, and how the quick and slightly messy method displaced the many opportunities that perfectionism usually takes up to suck the joy out of my art-making. And, as always … a few lessons in there that could be useful for getting myself un-stuck in other areas of my life!