Making a Blind Contour Drawing

By Paula Briggs and Sheila Ceccarelli

This is a classic drawing exercise, and with good reason. It’s an ideal exercise to use with all ages, all abilities. When you’re starting out drawing, this is a helpful exercise to help you focus upon careful looking, without the worry of what your drawing looks like. It is also incredibly useful in helping you to match the speed of drawing with speed of looking – when these two actions are mismatched the result can be frustrating. More experienced artists can also revisit this exercise to remind them of these skills.

In this resource we describe the process and suggest some suitable subject matter and drawing materials.

A typical "blind contour drawing"
A typical “blind contour drawing”


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