Contour Drawing

Goal:
          The student will contour draw using the "blind" and "regular" method a picture of some real object, either their own hand, seed pod and or shoe.

Materials:
          Paper               Pencil               Seed Pods               Old Shoes

Steps:

1. Draw by closing your mind to the regular way of seeing and draw by "feel".  Pretend that your eyes are attached to an ant that is slowly walking along the edge of the subject.  Whenever there is a part that is interesting, such as a shadow, an edge, a line or whatever, your eyes will follow it.  You are not allow to EVER look at your drawing, really, you may not look.  The idea is to teach your mind how to trust your eyes and Not to expect to look back and forth.
   Now, the important thing you are learning at this stage is to link your eye muscles to your hand and finger muscles.  It is that simple, but it takes time and practice, practice, and more practice to improve.  When a person draws in this manner they are doing BLIND contour drawing.
   Since you never look at your drawing, you will never need to erase, or even worry about erasing.  Were you to erase you would kill the drawing.  Really.  This type of art work depends on original lines.  So feel where the "important" ones are, push a bit harder.  Lighten up on the "unimportant" ones.  Once you look at the drawing, it is over!  'Tis finished.  That's it.  You may NOT begin anew on it.  Feel free to start a NEW drawing, but not on this one again.

2. The best subjects to practice on are organic ones.  Ones that if a mistake is made won't be easily seen.  Human-made items are too "perfect" and an out-of-place line will show up like a sore thumb!  Imagine what a pencil would look like draw with a curved line for its side, that will not do.  So practice on crumpled paper, twigs, crushed aluminum cans, old towels, and shoes?  Just about any free form item with no "expected" lines.  Practice whenever you can for it only takes 30 seconds to a few min.  Practice this skill whenever and wherever for the rest of your life and you will improve and keep on top of your skills.

3. The fun part now begins when you take the "blind" skills learned and incorporate them with being able to look at the drawing whenever you want!  The skills are the same as with the ant and any line or edge to follow, you just get to look at your paper whenever you wish.  How nice!  The key here is that you may also never re-draw or erase.  Remember that the vitality of your original pencil line is what makes your artwork alive. To re-draw it kills it, so don't.

4. Paying close attention to how important a line, an edge, a shadow or whatever your eye latches onto is and translating that importance to how hard your pencil is pressed to the paper is your major goal once you've learned how to trust your eye and hand coordination.  Once again, the name of the game here is to practice, practice and practice some more.  "Practice makes Progress".  Memorize this "new" phrase, for you will get farther with teaching yourself to succeed when you acknowledge that there is a possibility for progress.

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