http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-blind-contour-drawing.html
It makes good reading, and I remembered doing this exercise years ago. As I remember, the experience was fun so I thought it would be worth trying again using a window sill in the family room as my subject:
Unwittingly, I included an additional restriction; I did not raise the point of my ballpoint pen from the paper. So the following was completed without looking at the paper and without raising the point of the pen.
Here is my continuous line, blind contour drawing, and I love it! As the article suggested, I find this sketch so unlike my own work that I feel quite liberated - as though it were done by someone else, I can comment on it objectively. Unlike the author of the article, I don't find this work ugly. On the contrary, I like it quite a bit. It looks like Cubism, doesn't it? I would not have been able to do this without the freedom this exercise gave me.
Now, will I do it again? Yes, because I find the results interesting and because it is freeing. I do look carefully at the relationships between objects differently. Do I get a Zen-like feeling about the objects? No. Or maybe just "not yet". I think I will add this to the studies I do and see if it makes a change in my work.
I think it's interesting and kind of neat. Are you going to paint it or just leave it as it is?
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