If Blind contour drawing isn’t a lesson in humility, I don’t know what is. I’m looking at pictures of beautiful creatures, ones I have loved since I was young, and trying to capture their form on a page while not looking at the page. I thought my sketching experience couldn’t get much worse until today. I’m glad the instructor told us we would need to be able to laugh at ourselves and our drawings because that’s about all I could do. I found that I could focus on my subject and see the details of the skin, feathers, fur, and shapes, but it was very difficult to keep myself from looking down. I had to tell myself not to do it several times despite wanting to peak so badly.  I was able to hold off until the end and then look at my abstract drawings. When I showed my husband, he could guess at the possible species: lizard, chicken, kelp, bull, and Ireland he stated. Newt, sunbird, bird of paradise, springbok, and cypress tree, I replied. It was simultaneously a fun and frustrating experience:) I've included a picture of my Green-tailed sunbird/chicken blind contour drawing for your entertainment:)

In each of my attempts I could see that what I drew had a passing resemblance to the actual picture. My feeling of distance/length was a little off and I crossed lines a couple of times especially on the Springbok. Much better than I thought I was going to do.

Having trouble maintaining a sense of scale... and always fail to end up back at the starting point.  But certainly a worthwhile exercise. The springbok was the hardest probably due to the open areas that didn't fit into the approach.

Some were better than others. The perception of sizes is a big one. The flower and newt were better than the Sunbird and Sprinbok. The Springbok body too thick and the neck head to small, several rub outs for this one.

I tried left to right, right to left, different starting points and even mentally counting how long a segment was in relation to others....but still had lackluster results.  Definitely something to work on.  the biggest challenge was to have the start and end points meet.

I admit at first I was a bit skeptical about the exercise, until I heard WHY it was useful - to learn to trust the relationship between your eye and your hand. I was actually surprised that most of these were discernible shapes! I wish they hadn't overlapped but that's a purely aesthetic complaint lol. I found this really helpful actually!

It was intimidating, but each time I did better than I thought I’d done. That was interesting. And encouraging. I actually want to try to do it some more … as a practice. Yes, I surely do think it helped me stay focused on my subject. I even found that I was speaking aloud to myself ... to guide myself along. And that seemed to help.

Your presentation helped me a lot! I tried contour drawing eons ago and didn't really get it. But now that I've been involved with cataloging oak tree species I find that the contour drawing has sharpened my observation skills in bark patterns and leaf forms. Thanks!

This exercise was really challenging! It did help me stay focused, but judging lengths, sweeps, curves of the continuous line to end up back where I started just didn’t happen. It’ll be interesting when I go outside to try the exercise….when it warms up a tad. 15 degrees F today, windy with a wind chill around 9.

i found the springbok easiest to draw, as it felt like it had the straightest lines. My newt wasn't great and neither was my sunbird. I struggle to connect the lines back up, but I'm sure many people do

Ill continue to use this tip! At first the newt looked like a large squiggle but i revisited it later and it looked pretty good! The springbok was the hardest but the most fun to draw. Can't wait to use this in the field!

This was tricky! In almost all of these, I did not connect the sketch to itself as I struggled to make sense of the distance between lines. In my sketch below, the legs were fairly successful, which was when I decided to retrace my steps without looking down.

How interesting the results.  Hey, this may have been the same techniques used in the cave paintings .(?) I like it for abstract drawing.

Oh boy. I made an Amoeba. This tasks was a bit challenging as I was not able to decipher the width of the animal I was drawing unto the paper. I was focused, but my lines did not connect.

This exercise started out frustrating and then became a lot of fun since I knew the drawings would look terrible from the start.  However, by the end I think I became more aware of the proportions of the drawings spatially on the paper, and where my pencil was in relation to the lines I had already drawn (but they by no means ever looked "good" or "correct").  There were a few areas that I think I paid attention and made good progress though; for example, the Springbok's ear and the placement of the newt's feet.

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I decided not to include pictures, I was terrible, I'm proud to say I could at least find a section of line that looked similar to the picture. I decided I needed serious practice so today I grabbed a sketch book and started practicing. I shut my eyes and drew circles, squares and various shaped lines. On the lines I tried to duplicate length and angle and maintain uniform spacing and on the figures getting the beginning and ends to meet. After a bit of practice I began to see in my minds eye what my pencil was doing. I think with this as a warm up I will begin to see improvement.

I agree with Melanie (below), the ends don't meet, but the results are very interesting! I am especially happy with my Springbok, maybe because it was the last of the series and I improved as I went?? Or maybe the animal looks like road kill?! Mine were done in ink, which I find much more easy (better flow?) than pencil. Anyway, cool exercise!

LOL, well let’s say the beginning and end never connected. I see some similarities but definitely hard to make out. The Bird of Paradise and the bird were the only ones you can make out what they are. I thought the newt would be easy but I botched that one. I remember doing this as a kid. It was a game to draw blind folded and I was better at it as a kid drawing something out of my head onto paper without looking. Will need to practice this more. I mean loads more. Was fun though.

I feel like a 50/50 mix of watching what you are doing and watching the object is better then simply just watching the object. If you solely watch the object, your drawing might not resemble the thing at all--as seen here. This is the Sunbird by the way. However, if you just look at your drawing, there's no doubt you would have a similar problem due to lack of input.

I was surprised that the drawings even resembled what i was trying to draw!  This was much quicker than when I drew the warbler in the first exercise.

I found this super challenging! But definitely helped me notice aspects of the shape that I might not have noticed. I think I will do this again as a warm up exercise for a drawing - to really SEE the contour lines. I'm laughing at how abstract my subjects are :)

Contour drawing was challenging for me. I found slowing down definitely helped to improve my images. Contour drawing definitely helped me stay focused on the subject.