My Artistic Life - (Contour Drawn/No Peeking At Paper!) by Thea Cable

Absolutely love this Thea, I think these contour drawings are so much more interesting than conventional drawings. Are you going to enter it in the competition, you should? Did you see your selfie on Facebook?

Thank you, Christine. I must say I have been amazed at how lively these drawings turn out to be - they seem to have a life that drawings done in the normal way can often lack. I think what I will take from this experiment is that you should spend more time with your eyes on your subject and less time watching your hand draw. Also that you should be prepared to slow your drawing down when observing difficult passages of a drawing to try to co-ordinate hand and eye better. I didn't think I would learn so much from what started off as just a bit of fun. Not sure about the competition - will think about it. I did see my Selfie on Facebook, quite a surprise! Mind you, wait until you see my second Selfie, which I will post soon - that should give everyone a good laugh!

P.S. I have found that it encourages you to paint more loosely too - what a bonus!!

I love this... A challenge that gas worked so well.

Has...........

Fabulous Thea and thank you for inspiring us all with the challenge which I'm enjoying so much!

This is a cracker Thea and what a fantastic challenge, you've really got everyone fired up and wanting to give it a go. I'm struggling for time to paint at the moment but I will give it a go sometime soon as I know my hand/eye co ordination leaves a lot to be desired.

Enter this.

Thanks Sylvia, Louise, Val and Gudrun - although I am not sure I deserve praise as it was my hand and eye that did all the work - brain not needed!

It's a cracker!

Love this, Thea! A delightfully appropriate subject for the competition and very beautifully done!

Good work Thea, I tried to draw my hand without looking once, it wasn't very good at all :(

Thank you Debs, Seok and Carole - I'm finding this all very good fun and I am not worrying about how the drawings turn out (which I usually fret terribly about). Let's see your hand, Carole - the idea is that they don't have to be 'good' - they just have to be a contour drawing done without looking at the paper and what comes out of it is what comes out of it (if that makes sense). We have had some drawings to rival Picasso - yours might be another one!

Great result Thea!

So accurate Thea, amazing really and so appealing to the eye. You must enter it to the competition!

Thank you very much Sarah and Satu. I have put it in for the competition but as I have never won anything like that in my life, I don't hold out much hope! I just thought it would be nice to enter it to represent our new school of drawing - The CD/NP School of Drawing (contour drawing/non peepers)!!

Excellent! You're very good at this and the sploshes of paint are perfect!