Cross Contour Drawing - The Definitive Guide (2024)
Cross contour drawing is the foundational skill for conveying realistic three dimensional form in your drawings. And it’s easy to learn!
In essence, it’s about teaching your mind and hand to imagine, how it would feel to move with the pencil across the surface of the subject you are drawing, instead of just outlining it.
Contour is the silhouette or outline. Cross contour is the stuff between.
This article shows you the basics of cross contour drawing, all the way to advanced applications using planes, design and tone.
Combining cross contour drawing with other concepts is where the magic happens, and it’s how you get realistic drawings like the one below:
Graphite figure study on Moleskin paper. Cross contours build the drawing, the brush hides the proof.
Lastly, we’ll cover how to practice cross contour drawing beyond the beginner level, as it’s a skills you can continuously get better at, and it will keep improving your drawings.
So let’s get into it!
I recommend reading the article in order, but feel free to jump around using the ToC below:
Free Bonus: Watch the Cross Contour Video Tutorial and see how to apply cross contour marks in a figure drawing.
Cross Contour Line Drawing For Beginners
Cross Contour Line Drawing Exercise 1: Simple Forms
Basic forms with cross contour lines.
For this exercise, grab a pen and draw the basic sphere, box and cylinder. Once done, add cross contour lines.
If the surface is flat, use a straight line, if it’s round, use a curved line.
The more curved the line, the more round the form feels, the less curved the line, the flatter the form feels.
Don’t be overly critical, these don’t have to be perfect. Just take 10-20 minutes drawing those basic forms with cross contour lines and get a feel for the effect each cross contour creates, as you add it.
We’ll return to the basic forms at the end of this article, when you’ll learn how manipulate them.
Cross Contour Line Drawing Exercise 2: Organic Forms
Organic forms are great for practicing cross contour drawing.
For this exercise, simply find photos of plants or animals, and do a quick sketch that emphasizes the form using cross contour lines.
Animals and plants are an excellent next step, because organic forms tend to be composed of many hybrid forms, meaning a mix of the sphere, box and cylinder mashed together.
As you can see in the drawing of the whale, the cross contour lines emphasize the roundness of the body, and the areas where they don’t exist (e.g. the bottom part), look a bit more flat.
There’s no perfect system that tells you one specific line is perfectly correct. Where you chose to draw cross contour and in what direction is a design decision on your part (more on that later), that emphasis or de-emphasise the form in your drawing.
Try it out now! Sketch a plant or an animal, and play with the cross contours.
Cross Contour Line Drawing Exercise 3: Objects
Hybrid objects are more challenging than organic forms, as perspective mistakes are harder to disguise.
Next, find a simple object around your home, that has a hybrid form. I chose a pencil sharpener.
Once again, free-hand draw the object, and focus on using cross contour lines to describe the surfaces.
This might feel a bit more difficult than the organic forms, as square objects tend to be less forgiving if you don’t follow linear perspective rules.
I would ignore that for now though, and roughly get the perspective right based on observation.
The goal is once again, to get a feel for what form effects you can achieve using cross contour lines, by flattening (straight lines) or rounding (curved lines) the form.
Advanced Applications Of Cross Contour Drawing
Now that you understood the basics, let’s get into more advanced applications.
Don’t be intimidated, all of these are easily learnable with a bit of focus and targeted practice (which we cover in this article as well).
Cross Contour Drawing and Planes
To create the illusion of form on paper, it’s important to understand planes.
The concept of planes is about how you simplify the surface of your subject into areas that have the same value, or same planar orientation in perspective.
Planes can shift in direction as you move from one to the next. Sometimes suddenly, as they do on a simple box, sometimes gradually as they do on organic forms.
Cross contour drawing can be used to describe these planes.
Here’s an example:
Build planes with patches of cross contour, one at a time. Reference by thedynamicmuse.com.
As you can see, I outlined or “lassoed” the planes with line, and then used cross contour marks to give the plane a sense of orientation, or direction.
This technique gives your drawing an immediate sense of depth, and you can layer micro planes on top of bigger planes for even subtler changes in form. For example to make the lower eye lid more round I used cross contour on the outside of the plan, to round it off.
Try it now. and you’ll feel how it makes your drawing come off the page!
Cross Contour Tonal Drawing
Sometimes beginners fall in the trap of thinking cross contour drawing is just a fancy way of sketching with line, but has no applications to making a fully rendered drawing.
That’s a mistake!
Take a look at the three eggs below:
Cross Contour + Value = Form
Egg one creates a simple form effect, by using cross contour lines with a pen.
Egg two uses cross contour tonal marks with the side of a pencil.
Egg three uses cross contour tonal marks, but varies the value (light in lights, dark in shadow, even darker core shadow).
As you can see you get the strongest “form effect” by using both cross contour mark making, and value manipulation. That’s because both communicate form:
The cross contour mark spells out to the viewer: “This mark moved over the surface in this specific way, hence the surface has this specific form.”
The value change communicates to the viewer: “The value of this plane is different to the one next to it, so it’s orientation towards the light and your eye must be different”.
Using both is like a double whammy, and it’s how you create more realistic looking drawings like the one below:
Cross contour is the foundation for realistic rendering. Reference by thedynamicmuse.com.
My figure drawing shown above uses marks that consider both, cross contour direction and value.
You can see for example that the pants were drawn with dark, curved horizontal and vertical lines. The lower back shadow shape also describes the surface of the lower back anatomy using cross contour thinking, while the value is lighter.
Here’s the key lesson:
Beginners often get confused when they look at a very polished drawing or painting, as values just seem “smooth”, with no hint of pencil or brush stroke direction.
What they miss is that the artist indeed used cross contour mark making with every stroke. It’s how the form is “built”.
He or she just layered the strokes next to each other so smoothly, with subtle transitions in value, over so many layers, and potentially even concealed the strokes in the end using a brush, that it appears like a flawless transition.
Cross Contour Drawing And Design
When to use or not use cross contour drawing, and how to use it, is a design decision.
You can use cross contours to:
Enhance the curvates/feeling of form of a surface
Flatten an area and make it look graphic
Guide the eye using line direction
Like every concept in drawing, it’s a design decision how and when you use it.
As you can see, the spheres above all communicate some level of form.
The three spheres on the left create a more graphic/flat read of the shadows, each with a different visual flow depending on the line direction. The sphere ont he right has a greater sense of form in the shadows.
When to use straight vs cross contour lines is a decision you have to make while drawing. Ask yourself:
Do you want to enhance form in the area? Use cross contour.
Do you want to flatten or unify an area? Use straight lines.
Whether to use horizontal or vertical straight lines, wether to mix and match straights with cross contour lines… All these are design decisions you’ll have to make.
The best way to learn how to make those cross contour design decisions is by studying the greatest designers of the past.
How To Practice Cross Contour Drawing
Now that you are able to “see” cross contour, and understand it’s applications, let’s get into more specific exercises.
The goal with these is to help you “absorb” how to think, see, and feel three-dimensionally.
Over time you’ll become intuitive in cross contour drawing, and will seamlessly weave it into your drawing process, balancing it with other concepts, so it enhances your drawings, without dominating them.
Quick side note: training all your senses as you draw, not just one, is core to my teaching philosophy. Make sure to check out my drawing practice article on how to get better faster using a multi-sensory approach to drawing.
Cross Contour Exercise 1: Studying Line Drawings Of Great Masters
Study the cross contour lines of the greats: Rembrandt (left) and Heinrich Kley (right).
If you’ve been a regular reader of the blog, you know that I’m a great fan of master studies. Personally, I’ve improved a lot by doing freehand drawing studies of great master paintings and drawings. It’s one of the most effective way of improving in my opinion.
To study cross contour design specifically, I recommend doing free-hand drawings of master works that heavily focus on line art, or etchings.
The examples above are drawings by Rembrandt and Heinrich Kley. Other great line masters are Albrecht Dürer, Charles Dana Gibson and Franklin Booth. Check them out, chose a piece that you really like, and study their cross contour lines.
You’ll learn how they used cross contours to describes planes, combined it with value, designed the visual flow of the image, all at once!
It’s so effective, as these types of drawings reveal every single stroke the master made. In polished drawings or paintings, it is much harder to study cross contour, as the artist concealed the directional strokes through blending.
I recommend you return to this exercise regularly.
Cross Contour Exercise 2: Studying Painting Sketches of Great Masters
Unfinished or “sketchy” paintings by old masters are excellent to study cross contour tonal drawing. Here’s why it’s so effective:
The direction of the brush stroke reveals the cross contour
The patches of paint reveal planes & value
Picking specifically sketchy or “unfinished looking” paintings is the key, as it’s easy for an inexperienced eye to see the cross contour.
Simply take a pencil that has a round tip (not sharpened), or one sharpened to a bullet, and do some quick tonal studies of a sketchy painting, specifically following the cross contours of the artist.
Notice the brush stroke’s direction and description of planes. Painting Carolus Duran, Sargent’s teacher.
As you get better at this and the previous exercise, you’ll be able to imagine the cross contour strokes even in more polished paintings, and it’s what you’ll have to do when drawing from life as well.
Meaning you’ll reduce what you see to cross contour marks that describes planes, design, and use value.
To start look at painting sketches of the following artists, then find your own favorite masters:
John Singer Sargent
Robert Henri
Carolus Duran
Cross Contour Exercise 3: Modify forms
Once you get a hang using the master study exercises above, it’s time to play a bit.
By manipulating cross contour you can change the surface areas of any form.
Pick a simple form you can see nearby, e.g. a furniture or the like.
Sketch it staying true to it’s form. Then try manipulating the cross contour to:
Make edges rounder
Change curvature of planes
Cut out elements
Add masses to surfaces
Cross contour provides an intuitive way of modifying form based on your imagination.
In the drawing above I started with a rectangular box. Then I rounded the top plan by curving the cross contour line, and as you can see it created a “hill”. Then I did the opposite and it created a “valley”.
I also added a mass below, and cut into the form on the right side.
As you can see this simple exercise is very empowering, as you can sculpt and create forms from imagination. It develops your intuitive sense for perspective.
Closing Thoughts
Cross contour is one of those skills that might seem gimmicky at first when you see those line grids.
Personally, when I first saw cross-contour line drawings I thought:
“I don’t want my drawing to look like a cross contour diagram. Why should I use this?”
What I then realized, and tried to convey in this article, is that the cross contour line grid is just the base skill.
The magic happens when you weave cross contour marks into your overall drawing process, in a way that enhances it in combination with other fundamentals.
And to this day I find cross contour master studies to be the most effective way to absorb in an intuitive way how to design form on paper using cross contour.
Essentially the great masters teach you cross contour “solutions” for specific drawing problems, and those visual solutions will pop back into your head as you draw. The more you do those studies, the more your intuition builds.
So, learn it, practice it, become good at it, and aim to balance it in your final drawings with other concepts!
Until next time,
Felix
PS: If you like the teaching style of this article and want to build a solid base of drawing skills, check out my video course Drawing Fundamentals In 7 Days. It contains 10+ hours of in-depth drawing videos teaching you how to get great at this exciting skill.
