After doing a lot of blind contour drawings I’ve started noticing when I make false lines — lines that seem like they should be there, but aren’t based on actual looking.
This happened last night when I was watching a William Kentridge documentary and found myself filling in features on his face after the screen switched from a shot of him talking.
It’s not about a line not looking right, exactly, a false line does not feel right when you make it.
Once you train yourself to notice false lines and that icky feeling you get from making them, you push yourself to go back to looking harder.
There must be a correlation here with writing. We use the same term — “lines” — to describe units of words across the page.
How do we know when we’ve written a false line?