The Freedom of Contour Drawing
One of the most surprising ways to disarm the inner critic when it comes to drawing is to do blind contour drawing. That’s when you look at an object, like a cup or a plant or a face even, and you draw it WITHOUT looking at your page.
It’s unsettling, but oh so freeing, because when you look down at the odd image that has emerged on your page, you can say, well, I wasn’t looking at it, so there.
But here’s what is quite surprising: because you are LOOKING so carefully at what’s in front of you, while allowing your pen to trace what you’re seeing – on the page – you will often be quite surprised at how much like the object this blind contour image can be.
A couple of weeks ago, I did a blind contour drawing class led by Anne Leuck. She calls it Blind Contour breakthrough and she had us draw a plant, a couple lamps, flowers, even faces. And then after drawing the images – sometimes drawing the same image twice, one over the over, we had a chance to color.
The process of coloring is something that I’ve written about before – the joy that I feel when coloring – and how I no longer believe that color is dessert that you can only bring out when you’ve done a perfect drawing.
Coloring our blind contour drawings actually allowed us to play with line and pattern and abstraction, resulting in often delightful and surprising drawings.
The class provided a lovely way to have fun and get in touch with our own way of drawing and making lines.
We also did modified blind contour – which means you look a couple of times at the page while you draw.
Learning to use contour drawing, blind contour drawing and one line drawing in my drawing practice helped me to approach drawing, especially complex objects, with more curiosity and lightheartedness.
Anne says that blind contour drawing helps you develop a practice of trusting yourself — your eyes and your hand –without having inner critic, or left brain, judging us.
If you’re curious to see how other artists are using blind contour drawing, check out this video by Allison Kunath who did a series of blind contour portraits.
