Well I tried to focus on the subject so what happened was that my perception of where my hand/pencil was on the paper was so off!! LOL my springbok turned out looking like maybe a buffalo with a trunk!!!  It was also hard not to look at the paper...will do a bit more practice with this one outside.

I'm not sure it helped me stay focused on the subject. I found myself thinking a ton about the lines. I was watching my subjects intently but I could immediately tell that it wasn't really going anywhere. My bird of paradise flower wasn't so bad, but mostly I'm not sure I found this helpful for my journaling in general, but was an interesting exploration of hand-eye coordination without looking down at your hands.

Not my best work! My newts were more like seals. I started drawing from the left top of the picture and found that my lines left to right weren't  quite  so bad but following from right to left along the lower edge were  not good.  Then I tried covering the left eye - result quite bad, but when I covered the right eye the results were surprisingly reasonable. I am right handed. I've learnt something about how my eyesight affects my co-ordination, so will practice taking this into account also.

Whoa! I thought I was doing okay, until I looked down! I noticed that the activity was different when using the photos versus an object right in front of you. The photos already blur the depth and you can focus on the lines. In person I did a snake plant. I had to adjust my eyes to follow just the outline, changing field of depth. At one point I had to keep on eye closed to stay focused on the line. I feel my best test was the newt. I like my feet, the eye spot, the curve of the trail and connecting the back leg.

Picasso! :)

I always feel awkward doing these exercises. But it does make you look closely.

It was really difficult to not look down. For the whole entire time that I was blind contour drawing, I had the urge to look down and see what I was drawing looked like, but I ended up stopping myself from doing so, which I'm really glad about. I really liked this challenge, and like others, the end result was quite... interesting. I was very satisfied with the green-tailed sunbird, because I actually got the lines to meet, but I ended up making the head look like a square, which looked really funny, since the actual bird has more of a rounded and not a rectangular head. Overall, I thought this helped me focus on what I was drawing, but it was pretty difficult, and I hope to improve!

Yes, it helps you focus on the subject but this is a rather difficult exercise for me.  Need lots more practice!

I will refrain from putting my four images up. Too embarrassing, but I will suggest that it is a very hard activity, especially not peeking at all. I can see the merits of doing it. Perhaps doing it a few times will be beneficial overall.  I will try that.

I circled some of the parts I liked ! Tried a bit more detail in the last one .

This was a funny exercise!  Coming  back to the starting  point was the biggest  challenge. The larger the size of the drawing, the  more difficult it becomes ..  I had also very different results when I made the contour drawing clockwise or counter clockwise..

Total disaster!!!! Hahahaha

Stayed focused YES.....the drawings NOT so good.

Boy, I really stink at this!  Stopped putting the images in my journal as I have done several tries at each.  Got a little better but not much.  But I do agree that this is a fine exercise to establish that eye hand coordination.  Will continue to do this regularly.  Found the plant to be the easiest, all others pretty hopeless.  The first line is OK but coming around the form is not.

My 2nd try on the newt was surprisingly not-too-weird. Not gonna share that springbok, tho.

I expected the sunbird to be the easiest and springbok to be the hardest, but my sunbird came out the worst and springbok the best. Look at that blob bird! I think I did a good job on the springbok's hoofs

I feel that this blind contour made me focus and slow down the drawing speed very much. Blind contour in a single line produced some unrealistic drawings. But without looking at the draw that much, quick glimpses, I think I was able to produce some good images. Even the main darks and lights in the draw was quite easy to do. Starting with contour blind and them make a few corrections to the draw almost without looking creates reasonable drawings. I add a picture I made in blind contour of some animals, that were "cooperative" a caterpillar, a damselfly and a Mallard duck.

I need to slow down; take my time; not rush and keep my eye on the subject.  I will keep practicing this exercise.  It also matters whether I start from the left or from the right.  I am right handed but I do better starting from the left.  I took a botanical art course and I love nature; I am outside in the woods every day; I love to garden so I have lots of subjects to draw and take notes about.  Break up of winter with snow on the ground to April and no snow with the same subject.  Green shoots coming up out of the ground.  Birds at my feeder.  I will never be an artist and the more I draw, the better I will get. I am journaling every day.

I did all four and as a few other people said, I preferred looking at the image.  I could have tried the looking and not picking up my pencil as someone suggested.  They came out so light because in the blind contour I was drawing with a light touch I guess.  I am only uploading two of them although I loved all the images. 

I did the contour drawing not looking at my hand or the paper at all, and predictably, they were pretty far from the real thing.  I think I need to do this every day to get it right.  No fair erasing...

Still unable to upload images. I get a message to check format and size. My images are jpeg and less than 10MB as required. Still not loading.