A contour is the line that defines the edge of a form — the boundary at which a figure or object separates from what surrounds it.
Contours can be drawn explicitly (as outline) or arrive implicitly (as the meeting of two tonal areas), and they can be continuous, broken, hard, soft, searching, or assured. Description distinguishes a closed contour (uninterrupted, fully bounding a shape) from an open one (partial, letting figure and ground bleed into one another), and a firm contour (decisive line) from a lost-and-found contour (alternately defined and dissolved across its length). The term is central to drawing in particular — contour drawing names the discipline of describing form purely through edge — but applies equally in painting and photography wherever the boundary itself is doing the descriptive work.
See also
- silhouette — the whole shape a contour encloses
- figure-ground — the relation the contour separates
- mass — what the contour bounds