![]() ![]() My eye is not speeding up and my hand is not speeding up. I'm going to place my pencil on the paper, I'm going to observe the model, and I'm going to slowly start moving my pencil around and through her form. I'm going to do one now with our model here. You're going to find it hard not to look down, but resist the temptation. The blind part is that you aren't allowed to look at your paper while you're drawing. Imagine that your pencil line was a grey string that you could lift up in one piece. A contour drawing is done with one long unbroken continuous line. One of my favorite warm ups that always helps me slow down and see is blind contour drawing. Before you start working with a figure you should always warm up, and there are fun ways to do this. “The wisest mind has something yet to learn.- Strengthening your ability to see will build confidence. ![]() “Use a pen, if you use a pencil and it snaps, it will break (pardon the pun) your flow. This is one drawing exercise where you will feel the most positive impact on your seeing and drawing ability the soonest. Whether I feel like doing a 5 minute blind contour drawing or not, I just do it and enjoy the thought of my hand – eye getting more in sync. Blind Contour Drawing is now just part of my process when doing a realistic drawing. Tedious at times, but massively important. It’s the hardest exercise for me to want to do, but it’s the Recommended Drawing Exercise where I feel the most benefit. Sometimes I’ll have gone into the exercise wanting to skip it, only for the timer to go off after five minutes and have this desire to keep going. I sometimes feel like skipping it and going right into a drawing, but I always say NO, and within a minute or two of forcing myself to start the exercise, I normally get lost in it. There are times when it can feel tedious, especially when you first sit down to do it. ( I included the original Kevin photo I did, along with one of me now :) ) I’m normally twisted a bit more to the left so I can’t even see the paper. The image below shows my blind contour drawing pose, so you can get a better idea of how to do it. It’s best to do this exercise very slowly, with your eyes moving along the lines of the object slowly, and your hand trying to draw the same line, at the same pace. The aim is to get your drawing hand to follow your eye in complete sync. You end up producing what looks like the scribblings of a crazy person, I’m sure if someone looked through the window and saw you starring at pieces of paper for 5 minutes during one of these exercises they’d probably think you are :) That’s all there is to it, no peaking, no stopping, just making sure your eye follows whatever line it wants to nice and slowly. Never look at your drawing, only focus on the object for the full five minutes.Focus on the object you intend to draw with the other eye.I also suggest getting some Scotch Removable Magic Tape, to stick your paper down so it doesn’t move about as you draw. I normally grab a scrunched up piece of paper from the bin and turn it into an interesting shape, but you could use all the intricate wrinkles of your hand, or the pattern from the fabric of your socks for instance.īlind contour drawing is very easy to do, in fact, all you need is a pen/pencil, paper, and a timer. This means you’re focused on the object instead, forcing your eyes and hand to work together, whether they like it or not :) You can draw anything, but something that is highly intricate and random is best, as your mind can get lost in the details. Thus, drawing blind :) Betty Edwards describes blind contour drawing as requiring “…that you slow way down to see and draw everything, while never looking at the drawing.” HOW TO DO IT?Īs you can see from Betty’s quote above, you’ll be drawing without ever looking at your actual drawing. Blind Contour Drawing, also known as pure contour drawing, is simply drawing the contour of something highly complex, without looking at your drawing. Contour drawing is basically outline drawing, aka, only drawing the lines that represent the edges of things. ![]() It’s probably worth knowing what contour drawing is first. ![]()
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