Blind Contour Drawing

Contour drawing was first taught at the Art Student’s League in New York by Kimon Nicolaïdes in the 1920s and 30s. He used it and other exercises as a way to train his students to observe their subjects more closely. His methods are still being taught in art schools today.

Blind contour drawing involves carefully observing the outline and shapes of a subject while slowly drawing its contours in a continuous line without looking at the paper. By doing so, you are forced to draw what you actually see instead of what you think you see.

“A contour drawing is like climbing a mountain as contrasted with flying over it with an airplane. It is not a quick glance at the mountain from far away, but a slow, painstaking climb over it, step by step.”

-Nicolaïdes

Blind Contour Drawing Exercise

You should definitely try this! If you do, please send me a photo of your results, including a photo of your subject. Let me know what thoughts are running through your mind and your observations as you move your pen/pencil around the page.

For this exercise, you will need the following:

• A pen or drawing pencil
• A drawing pad
• A timer
• A simple subject. I suggest your hand, a shoe, or a grouping of fruit. Anything fairly simple will do.

1. Place your subject at a 90 - 180-degree angle away from your forward drawing position, to the left if you are right-handed, or the right if you are left-handed. You need to be looking away from your paper.
2. Set your timer for ten minutes.
3. Set your pen/pencil on a point on the pad and look at one area in your subject.
4. Begin drawing, don’t look at your drawing pad and don’t lift the pen/pencil from the pad.
5. Go slowly. As your eyes follow the line of your subject one millimeter at a time, your pen/pencil will move at the same slow speed.
6. Follow the outline and inner lines of your subject, including the details within the subject, changing direction, without lifting your pen/pencil. Try to follow the lines as if you were actually touching the object with your finger. Feel the item as it curves here, depresses there, and as it twists and turns.
7. Do this without stopping until the timer goes off.

When you look at your picture, it will look like a crazy jumble of lines, but if you look closely, you will see an interesting pattern, one that includes a lot of details that you may not have realized if you had not learned to see it.

Instead of provoking anxiety, blind contour drawing is meant to help you practice your observation skills. If you approach the technique with patience, it can even be a calming exercise. Look at it as a sort of exercise in meditation. The pen goes down on the page and your eye goes to a specific point in your subject and your eye and the pen move in sync.

There’s just something about moving that slowly and that focused that makes you empty your brain of everything else. You will begin to see things differently and your skills in seeing and drawing will improve.


My effort here to do a blind contour drawing. I admit I had trouble doing this very slow and ended up redrawing the images of the carrots, so there are two sets here. I used a Pentel pen, Doing this is a great way to slow down your eyes and check shapes and relationships.

According to Nicolaïdes, “Because pictures are meant to be seen, too much emphasis (and too much dependence) is apt to be placed upon seeing. Actually, we see through the eyes, rather than with them. It is necessary to test everything you see with what you discover through the other senses – hearing, taste, smell, and touch – and their accumulated experience. If you attempt to rely on eyes alone, they can sometimes actually mislead you.”

You can read about this and a series of other drawing exercises created by Kimon Nicolaïdes in his 1941 book The Natural Way to Draw: A Working plan for Art Study.

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More great tips for Drawing.

Class Schedules

No word yet on classes. I hope you are finding interesting and fun things to do with your time. Stay safe and be well.

Tell Me What You're Doing That's Creative

I hope you enjoyed this second session of Contour Drawing and Blind Contour Drawing. Feel free to share with others. Please continue to send me photos of your work. I'll do another Creative Challenge in a few weeks.

I'd love to hear from you. Are you feeling inspired? What are you doing to stimulate your creative side?

Email me: pmeglio99@gmail.com or just hit reply.