Mini Class: Sharpen Your Observation With Blind Contour Drawing

1. Introduction: Do you struggle to translate what's in front of you to the paper when you're drawing from life? Do you feel your pen strokes don't come out as intended because you're lacking hand eye coordination? Would you like to create more expressive and fluid linework in your sketches? Or are you just here looking for a fun warm up? Hi, I'm Julia an illustrator and nature sketcher, and welcome to this quick but focused class on exploring quantu drawing techniques. Today, I'll guide you through two powerful exercises blind contour drawing and modified contour drawing. These techniques are designed to help you see like an artist to improve your observational skills, hand eye coordination, and loosening up your mark making. They're also great for quick, effective warm ups. Whether you're new to sketching or want to strengthen your foundational skills, give these exercises a try. In a blind contour drawing, you don't look at the paper at all while you're drawing. Your eyes are completely focused on the object that you're drawing. In a modified contour drawing, you're allowed to peek occasionally at the paper, but only to check and correct your position slightly. And while all of this might sound really daunting, in the next few lessons, I'll walk you through both techniques so you can give them a try and see how they help sharpen your observational and mark making skills. And it's really going to be fun and you only need a pen or a pencil and a piece of paper for this class. So give it a try, grab your pen and paper, and let's dive in. 2. Blind Contour Drawing Practice: Start with blind contour drawing. The goal for this exercise is to draw the object without looking at your paper. Yes, that's right. No peaking allowed. This exercise forces you to really focus on what you're seeing rather than what you think you know about the object and what it should look like. I've chosen these watercolor tubes because I think they have some interesting shapes, they're relatively easy to draw. You could choose anything simple, anything that you're lying around a leaf or a pen, pencil, art supplies, your hand if you want something more complex, but I would say, start with something really simple. The way that I will start is I'll arrange the tubes here so that they look nice and then I will place my pen in the middle of my paper and then simply start my drawing. Remember, keep your eyes on the object the entire time. I will start at the top left that will make it easier for me. And don't worry if in the end, this will look nothing like the real object. It's not about making a pretty drawing here. Okay. Just trying to follow the outer contours with my eyes and to sort of replicate this with my pencil. Okay, here's what I ended up with. It's definitely not perfect, but that's okay. Don't worry if this doesn't look realistic at all in the end. So this won't happen anyway. You won't get a realistic drawing from this exercise. And that's not the point. View this as an experiment in mark making and loosening up. So let's take a look at this. I find that some parts of this drawing look really quite close to the watercolor tubes. And that's the real benefit for me is the practice of observing closely what you're drawing and look how fresh and expressive my lines are. This is always what delights me most about this exercise. So, now it's your turn. Grab an object, set a timer for one to 2 minutes and give this a try. And remember, no peeking allowed. 3. Modified Contour Drawing Practice: Next, let's try a modified contour drawing. And this time, you can glance at your paper occasionally, like when you make a major change in direction or you need to lift your pencil, but still try to keep most of your focus on what you're drawing on your object. So again, I will use my watercolor tubes here, and I'm starting my drawing right as before. I'm placing my pencil in the middle here, I'm starting at the top left, so maybe a bit more to the top. And every so often, I will check in with what is happening on the paper. Now when I have major change in direction, whoops, that didn't go so well. Not to worry about this. Just continue, continue drawing. So whenever I make one of these big energetic strokes, I don't want to look at the pencil at the paper. But for some of these smaller items, it can be nice to know what's going on where you've placed your pencil. Now I've already drawn my first tube. I want to look at the paper quickly, then place my pencil and just continue with taking a look at the object that I'm drawing. And I might even add some of those details on the tube here. Okay, this is all I've got. I've followed the outlines of the tubes again, and I've glanced down briefly to make sure my pen was roughly staying on course and notice how this allowed me to refine my drawing a bit more than the first one. I'm still not aiming for a finished sketch or anything like this, but the modified contour drawing is a bit more accurate. It still has this loose organic quality that comes from not overthinking each line. And now it's your turn to try a modified contour drawing. Pick a new object or use the same one, rearrange it a bit, and draw for another one or 2 minutes, allowing yourself a few quick glances at your paper and keep that pencil in motion. 4. Let's Compare the Results: Let's take a moment to compare these two drawings. So how does the blind contour compare to the modified one? You will probably see that both techniques capture the sense of movement and of flow, and they both have very expressive linework. I find that the modified contour is, of course, a bit more correct, so to speak. This is even looser. This is sort of almost abstract, it falls apart a bit more, and you can see there are two different objects here. They are placed more correctly on the page, so to speak. And I want to take a moment and say it's not really about how your resulting drawing is close to the original. There is no way to solve this exercise in this way. It's rather about letting loose and exploring hand eye coordination and allowing yourself to make these fresh marks. And this is a really surprising aspect for some students how bold and decisive their line art can look. So this is what I want you to explore. And practicing both of these techniques regularly will improve your ability to draw from observation, to learn this kind of observation, which is really essential for any artist, especially when you're sketching from life, when you're sketching from nature. Now that you've tried both techniques, I would like you to repeat those exercises with a different object and keep practicing and see how your lines become more confident and fluid over time and how this carries over into your other drawings. 5. Class Project – Share Your Contour Drawings: Now it's time for your class project. I'd love for you to share two quick drawings, one blind contour and one modified contour drawing. So choose any object around you like something simple, just a plant, your hand, or some art supplies, and then do these two exercises. And remember, these exercises are all about improving your observational skills and loosening up your mark making. They're not about the result or any kind of finished drawing, so enjoy the process and keep your practice fun. And if you enjoy these exercises and want to dive deeper into developing your drawing skills, I have a longer class called sketching Fundamentals, where we cover more essential techniques. It's perfect for anyone looking to build their foundational drawing skills from the start. With this class, you can learn how to draw anything. Thank you for taking this class with me. I hope it has inspired you to keep exploring and drawing and trying something new. So happy sketching and I'll see you very soon. Bye.