These are two drawings from my Art 3:Intro to Art and Design class. This class is a lot like high school art classes I took which introduce the concepts of Art. It's nice to have a refresher course on the basics of 2-D design. Plus, the girls at my table are awesome and we have a lot of fun during class.
The top drawing is a self-portrait using contour line to suggest the areas of shadow. We used charcoal on 18x24 in.


This is a blind-contour drawing. We had to keep our charcoal on the paper not lifting it at all for 10 min. (this exercise can continue for as long as the artist has patients to look) while looking at ourselves in a mirror. We also could not look at the paper at all. It's a way to train the eye into "seeing", improves an artist's patients while drawing, is a calming almost meditative exercise or experience, and a great warm-up. Looks kinda like Picasso, wouldn't you say?