As difficult as it may seem at first, force yourself not to look at your drawing paper. Keep your eyes on the still life object or model you are drawing and let your hand follow what you see.
To illustrate, here are some nude drawings I did while in University.
Imagine that your eye is actually pulling the pencil across the paper, in other words your eye is guiding your hand.The lines that come out will inevitably be either
contour lines
or
gesture lines
. Only when you do this, will you be faithfully recording what you see. Also, you will develop your own style without even consciously thinking about it because we all see things in our own unique way. At this point, don’t even worry about what your drawings look like. The importance is the process of learning to let your hand simply follow what your eye sees. In a sense, you are freeing your hand from previously learned expectations.
Here is a humorous "before and after" example of learning to draw with artistic expression.
Only when your hand is free can it create free and
expressive line drawings
. Because this method of drawing art may be new to you, you may find it challenging at first, but stick with it! Be concerned only with following this process and your drawings will naturally develop. Once you become used to the procedure, then allow yourself to occasionally glance at your paper in order to get your bearings. With time and practise, contour and gesture lines will become so ingrained in you that you will be able to divide your concentration between your model and your art paper. This is the stage you want to reach because then you can concentrate on your drawing while at the same time never losing site of faithfully recording what you see.
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