Drawing in the Blind
How to draw with your eyes
Last week, in the monthly and annual tier, we started season 2 of our Book Club: “Experimental Drawing” by Robert Kaupelis. The first assigment was all about contour drawing. In this post, I want to discuss what exactly is blind contour and why it is so effective to help you draw what you see. I’ll also outline the exercise for the next assignment in the Book Club.
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What is Blind Drawing?
When we say “blind drawing” what we mean is that you are looking at your subject or thing you’re drawing, but you are drawing in the blind. You are not looking at your drawing at all for the entire duration of your drawing session. This is the key. You need to fully commit to absolutely not ever looking down at your page while you are drawing.
At the very beginning of the drawing, you establish a connection to the subject through your eyes, FIRST. Take a moment to feel that connection by looking at one specific contour on your subject. And then, from that point on, it is only through your eyes that you draw. So, as you move your eyes along the contour, move your hand and pencil at the same time. If you don’t keep your hand in complete timing with the way your eyes move, you’ll lose that connection.
The critical aspect that will make this work, or not, is to keep your pencil in contact with the paper, and to draw slowly. If you lift the pencil up, and look at your page, you’ll break connection with the subject. And if you draw fast, you’ll break connection with the subject.
In other words, your eyes are drawing, not your hand.
So, again, the three key aspects of blind contour drawing -
don’t look at your page while you draw,
keep your pencil in contact with the paper, and
only move your hand in conjunction with your eyes. Only draw with your eyes.
Your eyes will easily and effortlessly follow any contour. So, pick an outer contour or an inside contour and just draw with your eyes along that contour very slowly.
When the contour comes to an end or meets another contour you have two options: either pick the pencil up and start a brand new contour - but still, without taking your eyes of the subject. Still without looking down on the paper. Or, you can follow the new contour directly adjacent to the first and start to follow that new line.
All the time, drawing with your eyes.
Remember to go slower than you think necessary. If you set out to do a 10 min blind contour drawing of the figure, and you nail it! in 10 …you’ve gone too fast! If you finish the full figure by the end of 20 mins …you’ve also gone too fast.
This drawing exercise really transformed the way I draw, and finally made everything in my drawing practice “click”. I can’t recommend exploring this enough.
If you are going to regular Life Drawing sessions, I’d love to support you in your drawing and help you to unlock both Gesture Drawing and Contour Drawing:
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For this week’s assignment in the Book Club, we are going to tackle Kaupelis’ exercises for Gesture Drawing! (obviously, I’m excited!! 😊 ). Here’s how we’ll do it: