A blind contour is a drawing exercise done with the artist attempting to not look at the paper. Every evening I do an image search of a subject and research a quote, and then try to draw them in as few lines as possible without glancing down. I meet with varying levels of success, both with the recognizability of the subjects, and my ability to resist looking at the drawing pad!
“The gorillas are not yet sufficiently advanced in evolutionary terms to have discovered the benefits of passports, currency-declaration forms, and official bribery, and therefore tend to wander backward and forward across the border as and when their beastly, primitive whim takes them.” – Douglas Adams #blindcontours
“I watched the gorilla’s eyes again, wise and knowing eyes, and wondered about this business of trying to reach apes language. Our language. Why? There are many members of our own species who live in and with the forest and know it and understand it. We don’t listen to them. What is there to suggest we would listen to anything an ape could tell us? Or that it would be able to tell us if its life in a language and just hasn’t been born of that life? I thought, maybe it is not that they have yet to gain a language, it is that we have lost one.” – Douglas Adams #blindcontours
“If gorillas were capable of such an expression, they would tell you that their family is like a hand, of which they are the fingers. They are fully aware of being a family but are very little aware of being individuals.” – Daniel Quinn #blindcontours
“His name is Marcus: he is four and a half and possesses that deep gravity and seriousness that only small children and mountain gorillas have ever been able to master.” – Neil Gaiman #blindcontours
“I have never listened to anyone who criticizes my taste in space travel, sideshows, or gorillas. When this happens I pack up my dinosaurs and leave.” – Ray Bradbury #blindcontours
“Hair on a man’s chest is thought to denote strength. The gorilla is the most powerful of bipeds and has hair on every place on his body except for his chest.” – Anton LaVey #blindcontours