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.
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.

Designing a Bag for Support of CT Foodbank/Foodshare

I recently broke down and bought an Intuos professional pen tablet for my computer. I had been thinking about purchasing one for a while now. I've struggled without one when designing some illustrations for a cookbook and for a logo for a flag project. While I'm not an illustrator, I love to design things and have struggled with the mouse for a while now.

I must say that it isn't an easy thing to learn because you can't watch where your pen goes on the pad, but rather you have to watch it on the monitor as you draw. At least that is true of the model that I bought, which is the Intuos4 medium. One thing I struggled with at first was resizing the monitor to fit my tablet size. Once I was able to do this, it went easier.  I think that I will enjoy using the tablet, but it will take some practice. I would like to buy some of the extra pens with brush tips to go with it. It sure makes it easier to draw a design from scratch on the computer. I drew it in Photoshop in black on a transparent background and then converted it to white. The white will show up better on a dark background.

Here's the design and the bag for a promotion for the CT Food Bank through the Northford Women's Club and the North Branford Women's Club.

The bag with design in white.

The bag is an 8"x5" fold up nylon bag that you can easily tuck in your purse or carry bag and whip out when you are in a store. It comes in royal blue and black and goes for only $5, not including shipping. If you are interested, email me at info@northfordwomensclub.org. All profits go to supporting the GFWC/CT State Project, which is the CT Food Bank/Foodshare.

Practicing Art, Repetition Works!

Albert Handell said it over and over, and Richard agreed that you have to stop trying to think in terms of making money from art and just practice your art. Keep working on something (one thing) until you get good at it. For example, in my critique, he noticed that I like to do red brick buildings, so he told me to paint twenty paintings of red brick buildings. That’s quite a task, but maybe it’s a good idea. I haven’t done it yet, but I do like to paint street scenes so I may concentrate on that. There are lots of old brick buildings in my area that would make good subjects.

I also think that drawing more would be a good idea. I just don’t do this enough and I need to get back into doing it on a daily basis. I do keep a Moleskin notebook in my purse at all times, but I've got to use it more. I have lots of sketch pads too, so there’s no excuse. I did do some sketching at a recent state women's club conference. I drew head poses of several women there. It was fun and I was able to pass the time while the speakers took their turns at the podium.