In this lesson, we will learn about contour and cross-contour lines, and how they can be used to create form and depth in our drawing. We will first try to understand the meaning of contour and cross contour lines before doing our exercise.

Contour Lines- Contour line is the outline of a drawing without any shading or details. Practicing to draw your object using contour lines is important as it greatly improves your hand-eye coordination because your eye needs to focus on the object whereas your hand needs to draw it on the paper at the same time.

Cross-contour lines- cross- Contour lines are lines that moves across the object that we are drawing. It is the direction that our eye moves when you look at an object. Cross- contour lines helps create an illusion of  dimension and form to an object.

In this exercise we will give form to various flat 2 dimensional objects. We will do that by creating contour drawings of objects and then we we draw cros-contour lines across to create form.

Start by drawing outlines of various objects as show in the image below:

In the next step try to visualize how the objects look in reality and in which direction the eyes move when you look at them. Now try drawing lines along your visualization. The drawings would look some what like the image below:

You can see how the circle looks like a ball, the oval takes the shape of an egg and so on. You have successfully added form to your objects!