Blind Contour
See instead of correcting
by Minute Studio · 14 units · Beginner · usually about 9 min
Drawing · Observation · Contour · Daily practice
You can follow an edge for minutes on end without looking at the paper, and point to where your line has steadied across three drawings of the same hand.
Blind contour means drawing a subject without looking at the paper: your eyes stay on it, and the pencil follows your gaze. The result rarely looks like the subject, and that is not the point. The practice trains close observation.
Fourteen days, about nine minutes each. Every day you draw. After two weeks you can follow an edge for minutes on end without looking at the paper, and you have a folder full of blind contours.
Materials
Paper and a folder for the sheets, a pencil or fineliner, a table, a phone for the photographs and a few everyday things: a cup, scissors, a bunch of keys, three small things that can touch, something large in the room, a plant or a cloth. No eraser.
The path
- Arriving with the line
- Seeing edges
- Speed and pressure
- Negative shapes
- Three everyday things
- Corners and changes of direction
- First comparison round
- Draw small, see big
- Continuous movement
- The three things compared
- Choosing your own subject
- Changing the angle
- Dress rehearsal
- Final comparison