Sweet Theo

Did this little contour drawing of my dog Theo while he was curled up asleep last night. (His head is at the bottom of the page with his paws stretched out on the left..).

I like doing contour drawings - especially at the end of the day. You look closely at your subject and without looking at the paper you slowly draw the lines you see - I imagine my pen following the edge of Theo's back and around each paw. Its always a surprise when you look at the page after and see what's recorded. Like this one, its often abstracted - sometimes beyond recognition, but it always has some feeling in it.

One of my books describes the pen as "caressing" the subject when you draw a contour. Sometimes when I'm doing them I'll peek a bit, just to see where my pen is, but that's ok...