I tried writing a few paragraphs about why I think people should learn to draw --- communicating ideas, self expression, recording memories --- and it seemed like so much fluff. It comes down to this: I bet you've said, "I wish I could draw."

Gaining the ability to draw realistically (and even photorealistically) is not hard ; you will need to devote some time to it, however. For this first exersize, you'll need to set aside 20-30 minutes of quiet time alone. I don't recommend music, and if there will be other people, avoid conversation. Alone is best.

You will also need a pen --- ballpoint is fine --- and a nice big piece of paper. You can do this on 8.5x11, but it's much more rewarding on big paper. I'll be doing my example on a page that's nearly 2'x3'.

Set up a comfortable place to sit; you'll want to be able to sit up pretty straight, and be able to reach your paper easily.

Enough preparation, eh? Read all the instructions first:

1. Place your pen in your writing hand and lightly touch the tip to the center of your paper.
2. Sit so that you face away from your paper, but your drawing hand can still comfortably reach the page. You should not be able to see it at all.
   
3. With your non-writing hand, make a nice relaxed shape; curl your fingers as if you're holding something, or pointing lightly. Just keep it very relaxed.
   
4. Now without looking at the paper, begin to draw your hand. Let your eye trace along the exterior outline, very slowly, taking in each bump and curve. As your eye moves, try and move your pen in the same way --- copying each little bump. When you've done the outline, then start working on the little grooves and interior lines.
   
5. Take the full 20-30 minutes and try and record every little detail. NO PEEKING. Please, I beg of you, resist the urge to look. Just let the pen move unobserved, and don't worry about the result. Chances are you'll be bored silly after about 10 minutes. Resist the urge to stop --- this is exersize! Keep pushing yourself to find new lines, new curves. Never stop drawing --- if you must, redraw the lines you've already done.
   

Go ahead. Do it! Reading what you were supposed to learn without doing the exercise is futile --- come back and read the rest when you're done.


Done? Good! Here's mine:A masterwork, no? If yours looks as little like a hand as mine does, I congratulate you --- you didn't peek even once! (Note that for clarity, after my 20 minutes were up I traced directly over the primary contours again --- the ones around my hand.) Right now you're probably despairing eve being able to draw --- and yelling at me about unreasonable constraints, ridiculous time limits, and difficult subject matters.

Tough beans.

There were several purposes to this exersize. None of those purposes was to make you look like Leonardo. Here are some reasons why I made you suffer through that:

1. Hand-eye coordination. If you can write, you have enough hand-eye coordination to draw. But learning to sync your hand to your eye when they are not pointed in the same direction is a little like patting your stomach and rubbing you head: not hard once you get the hang of it, but it takes a bit of time. You just spent 20 minutes forcing your hand to follow your eye.
2. Observation NOT classification. One of the greatest roadblocks to realistic drawing is labeling. As long as you continue to see a hand as four fingers and a thumb, you'll never draw it accurately. Blind contour drawing (which is what you just did) forces you to think in terms of lines and curves; you can't tell whether you're drawing a finger because you can't see what you're drawing. You can only concentrate on what the pen is doing right now.
3. Confidence. I know that that might seem paradoxical, to say you gained confidence from making such a godawful rendition of a hand --- but think of the last time you drew something. Did you use pencil? Did you erase much? How frustrated were you during the process --- and with the result? Now think about how you felt and thought during this drawing. You spent 20 minutes drawing a hand. I hope you felt relaxed during the process --- even meditative. You didn't erase once, because you were using pen, and you couldn't see what you were doing anyway. And you should feel good about your result, too. You drew in pen. You drew blind. And I bet there are recognizable bits in there, aren't there?
   

Try doing one of these a day for a few days. Don't worry about improvement --- just notice the calm, trance-like state that prolonged observation creates; during later exercises, you'll want to remember what that feels like.

[Note: for those of you who are looking up "blind contour" --- this exersize is a modified blind contour, because we are including many interior lines, which are not technically contours. Doing a pure blind contour is also worth a try, and is much faster. Do just what we did here, but only draw the outline --- no interior curves at all. It should only take a few minutes at most.]