Blind

4/8/14 blind contour

A couple of my friends have been practicing the principles and exercises described in the classic Betty Edwards book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I didn’t have time to go out for a sketch before it started raining, so I stayed in and practiced my favorite exercises from that book – blind contour (drawing with a single continuous line without looking at the paper) and modified blind contour (similar to blind contour, except small peeks are taken at the paper to reposition the pen).

4/8/14 blind contour

As Danny Gregory talked about in his classic book, The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be the Artist You Truly Are, a strange beauty can be found in those almost-abstract lines that make up the wrinkles and recognizable yet distorted shapes of my hand. The reason these exercises are my favorites is that there’s such liberation in letting go of the compulsion to look at the paper and “control” the line. If I’m not looking, then I can’t be responsible for the mess that results. Yet it’s not really a mess, is it?

4/8/14 modified blind contour

(If you have not yet read them, both books are classics for a reason. Read them.)