Blind contour drawing develops the ability to conceptualize and orient the drawing within the space and proportions of the page. This exercise builds awareness of the position of the drawing instrument on the page and trains you to model the overall image in your head. It also helps make you more tolerant of imperfections in your drawings so you can draw without self-consciousness.
Blind contour drawing was introduced in Kimon Nicolaïdes’ 1941 book, The Natural Way to Draw: A Working Plan for Art Study. It involves drawing the outline, or contour, of your subject without looking at the drawing, while you execute everything in a single, continuous line. The drawing instrument is not lifted from the page at all during the exercise.
All blind contour drawings will have distortions, and that is the point: this reveals unconscious biases that exaggerate or minimize parts of a subject. Blind contour drawings gives insight into these tendencies so you can compensate.
Without looking at the page and keeping focus on the subject, we’re forced to calculate proportions and position in the mind, mapping the entire page in our imagination. By forcing an immediate visual reaction to contours, this exercise removes reliance on rehearsed, stock strategies for drawing “things”.
So, why do them if they don’t result in finished art? Exercises like this are analogous to training for a performance or athletic competition. Pushing to failure in exercises builds ability, which we can apply to presentation pieces. Include a quick blind contour exercise in each warm-up. There’s no pressure to achieve polished resolution, but blind contour exercises are a powerful way to improve the ability to achieve accurate proportions and to pack information into each outline.