Introduction:

The purpose of this exercise is to strengthen direct communication between the seeing eye and the drawing hand.

Description of the Exercise:

Don't look at your paper while you draw. Use a fairly big piece of paper (bigger than letter size). Plan at least 1/2 hour of quiet, uninterrupted work to get a good contour drawing

Set your pencil on the paper. Observe the hand you aren't drawing with. Pick a point where your thumb joins your wrist. Start to move your eye along the edge of your hand - slowly. As you move your eye, also move your drawing hand, making your pencil record the edge you are seeing. Continue this until you have gone all the way around the outline of your hand. Try not to lift your pencil, try to get your drawing hand and your eye to travel at the same speed. Once you've drawn the outline, you can continue with more details, as long as you don't stop drawing and don't look at your paper.

 Gerrardine Keane

 Gerrardine Keane

 Kathie Kibble

 Kathie Kibble

 Julie Martens

 Julie Martens

 Cecilia N'Gai

Tobi Kennedy

With practice, you can become quite accurate at contour drawing, but even inaccurate contour drawings have a wonderful energy and directness. You need to work from a model, and the trick is to get your hand and eye to travel at the same speed, so don't go too fast.

You'll notice that in some of the examples the artists have "cheated." A bit of looking at your page here and there does no real harm, but the exercise really works best if you keep your eye on the object being drawn.