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One of the exercises that can help you train your eye to look at things the way they actually
are instead of just drawing say symbols of the way you remember them to be is called
a blind contour. What you're going to do is you're going to pick an object. I picked a
teddy bear, and you're going to draw the bear, or whatever it is that you pick, and you're
not going to look at your paper. You're going to force yourself to concentrate only on the
part of you looking at what you're drawing, and as you trace with your eye the outlines
and the curves of whatever it is that you're drawing you're going to be continuing to do
that on the paper too. Part of what's so good about this exercise is you're not going to
be self conscious about what you're drawing on the paper because it's not going to look
good. You know that in the end and so you don't have that pressure of trying to make
something look good and you're worried about whether or not it will. So I'm going to start
with the bear. I'm going to start right here at the crease between the ear and the top
of the head. I'm not looking at the paper. I see the curve. I see it come around to the
other ear and I see a little tiny crease right here and I see fur coming out of the ear,
and then I follow that down and there's a slight curve on the bottom side of the chin
all around to the bottom of the face up to the other side of the head and here comes
the other ear. It's like a semi circle on top but then it tapers down at the bottom,
and then inside I can see the fur coming out a little bit too. Now I'm going to draw the
eye. It's not a perfect circle so I'm not going to draw a perfect circle. I can tell
it's kind of crowded by the fur. So it's kind of like that, and then the nose it's making
a crease that's kind of a triangular crease almost all the way around, and then the eye
on the other side is more circular but there is still fur crowding it, and then make the
nose in the middle just kind of like a big oval that has these threads going across.
It has a frown on it's mouth and then we can come down and do the arm and I see the body
kind of come out of that. Then I see the leg and the foot and all I'm doing is I'm just
tracing exactly what I see with my eyes. I'm not looking at the paper. I'm just kind of
guessing where I'm supposed to put my pencil next because what I want to do right now is
focus on the looking and noticing all those little tiny things that make the bear look
realistic instead of like a cartoon. Noticing, you know, it's not exactly symmetrical. Okay
so here's my blind contour. It doesn't look anything like a teddy bear but that's not
what it's about. It's not about what you end up with. It's about training your eye to be
able to see and focus on those tiny little details and notice that the eyes aren't shaped
like perfect spheres. They aren't perfect little round buttons. So that's a blind contour
drawing.