Week #2: Blind Contour Drawing Exercises

This week we discussed the importance and the versatility of the blind contour drawing as a first week exercise for a high school art class.  This exercise helps to break down the symbolic way in which students draw and forces them to draw what they actually see.  This leads to more accurate drawings with fresher marks that are more considered.

We attempted some of these drawings ourselves with permanent markers on newsprint paper.

We also talked about having students complete a series of blind contours to warm up, slow down, and break down, followed by a longer series of modified contour drawings (that allow for limited lifting of the pen and limited looking at the paper).  These drawings are where you can start to see students make really interesting art.

We attempted a short series of these as well.

These drawing techniques can be applied to any subject.  We drew our hands, but we discussed drawing simple and complex objects (including plants and typewriters), hands, feet, and portraits.

We did a contour portrait drawing based upon a Picasso drawing, but in order to continue breaking the visual language and symbolic simplification our brains often engage in we were instructed to turn our reference image and paper upside down before drawing.

Below are a couple of my attempts followed by some student examples.

(Examples of student portrait work)

This project can actually yield wonderful, detailed, thoughtful student artwork that can be shown as is or used in an extension project.  One of the ideas I had for an extension of this project would be to use it as the basis for a stained glass water color painting. 

The first step would be to transfer one of the better contour drawings to a piece of watercolor paper.  Then the students would need to go over their drawing with permanent marker to keep them bold and fresh.  The next step would be to use water color paints to fill each section of the drawing, each pocket of negative space, with a different shade of color.  This would be a good time to discuss the basics of color theory including contrasting and complimentary colors, warm and cool colors, and tints and shades.  Students could make the decision to use colors that resemble their subject, or a non naturalistic color scheme.  As a result of this project each student would have a unique work of art and a working understanding of contour and watercolor, as well as a better understanding of color.  In addition, the relatively simple nature of this lesson would allow the teacher to assess student understanding early, and introduce some basic concepts.

(Examples of student work from similar extension projects)