“It’s kind of like a meditation,” explained Erin Pollock, a fellow at the New York Academy of Art (NYAA).
Instead of inciting anxiety, blind contour drawing is meant to help artists practice their observation skills, and for those who approach the technique with patience, it can even be a calming exercise. All I’d wanted was to make one solid drawing to prove myself capable of realistically portraying an object, but there I was, staring at my sweaty palm and making scribbles.īy the end of the semester, I’d made the mediocre still-life drawing I was after, but this exercise-a staple of drawing classes, known as “blind contour drawing”-has continued to teach me lessons about drawing long after high school. The teacher set a timer for 10 minutes (which felt like an eternity), and when it rang, I looked down at my paper to find a frightening tangle of lines, which only vaguely resembled a hand. As our eyes closely examined that hand, we were to use the other one to draw it, without ever looking down at the page or lifting the pencil.
We were to raise our non-dominant hands up to our eyes, to inspect the wrinkles, curves, and shadows. On the first day of the course, the instructor told us to get out a piece of paper and get ready to draw with a pencil. So, I begrudgingly signed up for an introductory drawing class. But in order to complete my portfolio for applications, I had to face one of my biggest artistic demons: drawing.
When I was 17, I was finishing up my time at a boarding school for visual arts, and dreaming of spending my college years at an art school in New York.
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