Contour study and second drawing of my keys

I noticed my keys yesterday, and how interesting they are visually, so I decided to draw them today. Keys are a good subject for a drawing exercise – just about everybody has a set on hand, they are a good size for a detailed drawing, and they usually have a lot of interesting shapes.

When I first sat down to draw these, though, I got a little intimidated by how complex all the lines actually were. I tried one little drawing, and it was awful – I abandoned it within three minutes of starting. Because I had learned the blind contour palm exercise from before, I decided to do one of those, but on the keys.

This is what I ended up with after about eight minutes:

That calmed me down a bit. The biggest problem I have with drawing is not technique, or skill, or time or talent. Its chilling out enough to sit still and stop worrying or doing things long enough to do a drawing. In other words, its not a lack of talent that seems to hinder my drawing. Its a lack of patience.

So after I chilled myself out and re-taught myself how to see for drawing by doing the contour study, I started this. It took about 20 minutes or so.

I’m not entirely sure what to say about this, but I guess a few things pop out. Making a few of the items dark (and they are dark-colored in real life) made the drawing look a lot better. Using different textures helped a lot too. I did not do a lot with different kinds of lines, but it just didn’t occur to me.

Really, the biggest takeaway from this was doing the contour drawing first. It really, really, really helped the second drawing come out better. I ought to make a rule for myself to do a contour drawing before I draw anything. Let’s see if I actually follow through on that.