Day 10. Let's Start to Learn to SEE
A silly start to a serious(ly fun) subject
Hello, friends. It’s Day 10 of the 30 days. You’re officially 1/3 of the way. I bow.
Before we start today, I want to address the whole “draw for only 10 minutes” thing. There are a couple reasons I strongly suggest that during the 30 Day of Drawing you use a timer to draw for 10 minutes - and 10 minutes only:
Ten minutes is achievable. Anyone can fit ten minutes of drawing into their day.
If you want to form a creative habit, it helps to pause your making sessions on a high note. Ten minutes is usually just enough time to get into the groove of drawing, for it to start to feel good, but not enough time to get frustrated and start to resent it. Ten minutes is often a creative high note. We want to press PAUSE when things feel good. When we stop making something at this moment, we are morel likely to want to return for more the next day. And that is how you develop a creative habit.
Ten minutes = an experiment. It is not enough time to focus on the outcome or on making a “good drawing.” It’s not enough time get anything perfect or right. It is just enough time to focus on the process, try something new, give it a go, and see what happens. It’s just enough time to Do.
Ten minutes = a sense of accomplishment. It feels good. It’s just enough time to get that barrel chested feeling that if everything else goes out the window today, at least you drew. That’s cool.
Can you go over ten minutes? Friends, I’m not the drawing police. There is no such thing as art jail. Yet. (*Knocks on wood.*) You’ve heard me say a hundred times: No Rules in Art. Everyone brings their own unique hopes and experience to the table. It if serves you to keep going past 10 minutes - or stop at 6 for that matter - go for it. You do you. (Just please mention it if you share your drawing in the chat so we don’t set unreasonable expectations for others who may be sensitive to such things.)
How does ten minutes work for you? Let’s discuss in the comments.
Drawing to SEE
And now we begin our dive into deep looking. This is my jam. I am endlessly fascinated by all types of visual perception - what and how we see (and what we do not) and in particular, how drawing impacts how we see the world and each other.
So, no surprise, we’re starting with my all time favorite, most fun and silly and hugely profound drawing technique today: blind contour.
But first, let’s clarify one thing. Before we jump into blind contour drawing, what is a plain old contour drawing?
Contour Drawing
Contour drawing is a drawing technique in which we draw only the edges of our subject. Contour drawing is, generally speaking, how *I* like to draw. I am fascinating by the concept of edges - how our brains understand where things start and stop and how these lines are the basis of the world as we understand it.
When I draw a subject’s contours, it feels like I’m using to my eyes to slowly carve my subject out of space, and transposing it to paper with my fingers. I love the experience. The technique keeps my eyes moving around my subject, paying close attention to the details and really SEEing how it’s constructed.
But! Contour Drawing is not what we are doing today.
Today we are going to practice the fun, silly, younger sibling to contour drawing.
Today we are doing “BLIND CONTOURS".
Blind Contours
Oh, yes, friend. If you’ve drawn with me for any length of time, you know this practice well. And you know how important it is to me, and how fun it is.
A Blind Contour is a drawing created with one rule: while drawing you can ONLY look at your subject matter - and you can NEVER LOOK DOWN AT THE PAPER YOU ARE DRAWING ON. This forces us to look super closely at what we are drawing, and trust our hands to follow our eyes.
Not only does blind contour drawing help connect our eyes and hands which helps increase our drawing skill, it teaches us to SEE again.
I know it looks loose and silly and the opposite of “serious drawing.” But honestly, I think blind contour drawing is the most important transformative drawing practice on Earth. Not only does blind contour drawing help connect our eyes and hands which helps increase our drawing skill, it teaches us to SEE again. Rarely in life do we slow down our eyes enough to really SEE at what - and who - is in front of us. When we do, we begin to question and undo biases and expectations of what - and who - we’re looking at. We begin to connect with them from a place of curiosity and vulnerability and authenticity. This, my friends, is called connecting. And that changes EVERYTHING.
I feel so passionately about this I have an ongoing art project called DrawTogether Strangers in which I set up a table and two chairs in public places, call over two strangers to sit across from each other, and then ask them to draw each other without looking down. Yup - blind contour! With this context, the experience is profound. The drawing is fun of course, but the real point of it all is the LOOKING. You can listen to an audio piece the New York Times produced about DrawTogether Strangers on Apple and Spotify and watch a super fun video the wonderful folks at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC made about the project below.
Whenever I give a talk I invite people in the audience do it, like at the beginning of the TED talk: “The Art of Paying Attention.” (See how our 30 day theme is omnipresent??)
ALSO, not only does blind contour drawing teach us to see, but it is also a LOT of fun to do. It forces us to slow down, pay attention, let go of expectations, control and perfection and just DRAW. Like, super fun.
Blind contour drawing allows us to let go of expectations of doing a “good drawing” and focus exclusively on process.
Unlike the traditional contour drawing, there is NO WAY a blind contour drawing can look “right.” It’s always going to look ridiculous. What a relief. Blind contour drawing allows us to let go of expectations of doing a “good drawing” and focus exclusively on process. Process over outcome. Basically our DrawTogether Motto.
Jason Polan
The artist Jason Polan (who died way too young at 37 in 2020) often used blind contour drawing to create his quick, gripping drawings of people as they rushed around New York City.
Jason’s line is so full of life. His drawings are way beyond accurate: they are documentation of him seeing people. The freedom and flow of his pen is full of care. You can tell how much fun he is having. He was IN IT.
His work is so inspiring to me because he loved to LOOK. And his drawings - these blind contours - showed it. And they make me want to look more, too. How about you?
Assignment
Alright, today, on Day 10 of the 30 days. All you need is a paper, pen, colors, and a subject. It could be some flowers or a plant. It could be a stuffed animal. Or it could be… A PERSON. Or it could be an idiosyncratic subject so no matter how silly the lines of your drawing end up being, it’ll be recognizable to you and others.
Oh, and some colors to paint your subject, like I did below. Or a pencil will do.
Now let’s get to drawing.
