The only difference between this and regular contour drawing would be to not look at your paper at all while you’re drawing.
Once you’ve got a good idea on how to do a contour drawing, let’s try the blind version, shall we? Don’t worry – it's not as scary as it sounds! Another option would be to do a continuous contour drawing, where you don’t even lift your pencil off your paper until you’re done. You can imagine the tip of your pencil as an ant crawling around the outlines of your subject. Tip: If you find that you’re tempted to start erasing things or add too many details, throw your eraser across the room and try to keep your eyes focused on the subject.
If you’re not sure what the final drawing should look like, feel free to look up some contour drawings online or refer to the image above! This is so you can train your observation skills, and draw what you see, not what you assume the subject should look like. The key here is to spend most of your time looking at your subject than your paper and to go as slowly as possible. After you’re done with the outlines, add some contour lines – basically, lines that divide the basic tones, shapes, and/or form of your subject. You can practice this yourself by first choosing a subject (still-life or a live subject will work), then start drawing the outlines on a piece of paper in pencil or pen. It can end up looking quite minimalistic, or even abstract, but it’s no less expressive because all of the subject’s information has been condensed and compressed into simple linework. With this method, you’ll be more focused on the shape and weight of the subject rather than its shading or small details.
In a nutshell, contour drawing is using basic linework to draw the essential outlines and contours of a subject. This will be a quick introduction to blind contour drawing, and to practice picking out the essentials through self-imposed restrictions. So how about trying a simple exercise to improve your observation skills? It’s quick, easy to understand, and can be a good “warm-up” before doing more serious work. Sometimes, practice can seem daunting, or perhaps you feel there aren’t enough hours in the day to squeeze any art into your day.