Contour Drawing Exercises For Total Newbies: How to Finally See (And Draw) Like a Real Artist, Not a Clueless Tourist
You ever wonder why your sketches look like haunted stick figures or off-brand cartoon mascots, no matter how hard you “try to get it right”? It’s not your hand, or your pencil, or that you were “born untalented.” It’s your eyes. You’re not seeing what’s really there—you’re just drawing a cartoon of what you think is there. Enter the only artistic bootcamp that rewires your brain like a junkie on a vision quest: Contour Drawing.
This is the no-bullshit, grind-your-teeth, breakthrough exercise that’s made more starving artists into solid draftsmen than any overpriced art supply, college class, or YouTube hack. It’s also the one that will make you sweat, swear, and maybe even throw your sketchbook across the room—but that’s how you know it’s working.
Confession: I Hated Contour Drawing—Until It Fixed My Eyes
Let’s get this out in the open: I used to loathe contour drawing. I thought it was slow, awkward, and pointless—until I realized it was the artistic equivalent of unlocking a third eye. Once you push through the wall, everything changes. You don’t just “see” a hand or a cup or a face—you start seeing lines, edges, angles, and negative space. Your hand becomes an extension of your gaze, not a prisoner of your brain’s lazy assumptions.
What the Hell IS Contour Drawing?
Forget fancy terms. Contour drawing is simply tracing the edges and surface lines of what you see, with your eyes glued to the subject—not your paper. You don’t sketch, you don’t shade, you don’t lift your pencil for detail. You crawl along the edges with your eyes, dragging your hand along for the ride.
There are two main flavors:
Blind Contour: You don’t look at your paper at all. Yes, you read that right. You stare at the subject, never peeking, and let the line wander wherever your eyes go. It feels insane, looks like a disaster, and rewires your hand-eye connection like nothing else.
Pure Contour: You’re allowed to glance back and forth between the subject and your paper, but only to realign. Still no erasing, no “fixing.” You trace the form as honestly as you can, warts and all.
Why Contour Drawing Works (And Why Most Beginners Avoid It Like the Plague)
Your brain is lazy. It wants to draw symbols (“here’s an oval, here’s a line for a nose, bam, it’s a face!”). Contour drawing forces your eyes to follow actual edges, forcing your hand to move in weird, unexpected ways. Every wrong turn is a signal flare—“hey, you don’t actually know what a hand looks like!”
The result? You learn to see as an artist sees, not as a kid doodling in the margins.
Step-By-Step: The Rust Dawg Contour Drawing Gauntlet
You want results? Do this, every day for a week, before any “real” drawing. No shortcuts.
Exercise 1: Blind Contour Self-Portrait
Sit in front of a mirror with a fat pen and a big, cheap sheet of paper.
Place your pencil down on the page—pick a spot, any spot.
Now, pick a feature on your face—your ear, your chin, the tip of your nose.
SLOWLY trace your gaze along the edge of your face, hair, ear, nose, mouth. As your eye crawls along, move your hand in sync.
DO NOT look at the paper. Not even a peek.
When you finish the loop, stop and look at your “portrait.” Laugh, swear, take a picture to memorialize the disaster.
Dirty Reality: It will look nothing like you. It’ll be a mutant spaghetti monster. That’s the point. Every “wrong” line is a neural pathway forming in your brain, training you to see honestly, not symbolically.
Exercise 2: Pure Contour Object Study
Grab an everyday object—mug, shoe, hand, crumpled paper, whatever.
Stare at one edge. Put your pencil down at the corresponding spot on the page.
Start moving your eye along the edge, and draw the line on your page as you go. This time, you’re allowed to glance back at your drawing, but only to check where you are.
Don’t sketch. No fuzzy lines. One, slow, unbroken edge at a time.
When you’re done, start again, picking a different starting point.
Ingredient Hack: Use a marker or crayon instead of pencil—no erasing, no chance to chicken out. Permanent means committed.
Survival Strategies for Not Losing Your Mind
Set a timer. Five minutes max. This isn’t about finishing, it’s about seeing.
Tape the paper down. Prevents cheating when your hand starts wandering off the edge.
Draw big. The larger your drawing, the less you can fudge it with tiny, nervous corrections.
Embrace ugly. Save your worst ones. You’ll be amazed after a week how much your “bad” drawings start to look more real.
Confession: My Breakthrough Was a Contour Drawing of My Own Foot
I was hungover, bored, and my sketchbook was the only thing within reach. I stared at my foot, traced the ridges, the nail, the knobby bone, never looking at the page. When I finally peeked, it looked like a frog had been run over by a bike. But something clicked—I had seen the foot, not my memory of a foot. Next time I drew from life, my proportions, angles, and edges were 10x more accurate.
The Dirty Art of Slow Motion: Why Speed Is Your Enemy (At First)
Let me hit you with the hardest truth—contour drawing is slow. Agonizingly, brutally slow. You’ll want to rush, to skip ahead, to “finish” the line and move on. Resist. Contour drawing is like crawling naked over broken glass: every inch hurts, every second tests your patience, but you’ll be a different animal on the other side. This is about retraining your brain to notice every bump, every dip, every jagged edge the way your tongue finds that one broken tooth.
Move like you’re drawing through molasses. If you catch yourself speeding up, stop.
Let your eye lead. Your hand is just following orders.
Ignore the urge to “fix” as you go. The beauty is in the brutal honesty, not the polish.
Ingredient Hack: The “Slow Jam” Playlist
Put on your slowest, most atmospheric music—ambient, jazz, trip-hop, whatever kills your urge to rush. The mood seeps into your hand. Suddenly, you’re not just drawing lines—you’re tracing the path of a slow-burning fuse.
Negative Space: The Secret Weapon
Here’s where the pros smoke the rookies. Stop drawing the thing—start drawing the space around the thing.
Trace the gap between your fingers, not the fingers themselves.
Draw the silhouette of a coffee mug by outlining the empty air between the handle and the cup.
Sketch your shoe by drawing the chunk of space beneath the arch.
Negative space contour drawing hacks your perception. It tricks your brain into seeing what’s actually there, not what it “knows” should be there. It also cranks your accuracy through the roof.
Exercise 3: Negative Space Contour
Place your hand on the table, fingers spread.
Stare at the holes between your fingers.
Trace those holes, not the fingers.
Only after you finish, go back and sketch in the fingers themselves if you must.
You’ll freak yourself out with how much more “real” your drawing feels, even if the lines are janky as hell.
From Outlines to Insight: How Contour Drawing Transforms Your Art
Stick with contour drawing, and suddenly everything starts to change:
Your proportions get less wonky.
Your “cartoon” lines start looking like real objects.
You begin to notice subtlety—creases, curves, folds, overlaps.
You stop relying on tired visual clichés.
This isn’t just about edges, either. True contour drawing will help you break through to gesture, form, even shading—because you’ll finally see the rhythm in what you’re drawing.
Confession: Contour Drawing Is The Best Art “Reset Button” I Know
Any time I hit a wall—art block, confidence crisis, burnout—I drop everything and spend a few days doing nothing but brutal, honest, contour lines. No erasing, no “pretty” drawing, just pure, raw observation. Every time, I crawl out of the funk sharper, looser, and a little more ruthless.
Survival Strategies for the Long Haul
Don’t judge your results. Judge your process.
Stack your worst contour drawings in a folder. After a month, look back—you’ll see real, ugly, glorious progress.
Rotate subjects: hands, shoes, pets, faces, trees, whatever. The weirder, the better.
Repeat exercises in pen for maximum “do or die” energy.
The Final Reality: Contour Drawing Hurts Because It Works
If it feels awkward, if you’re frustrated, if you’re doubting every line—good. That’s where growth lives. Every artist you envy went through this hell and came out stronger.
You want better sketches? Stop sketching—start seeing, one brutal, honest, wobbly line at a time.
See Also:
“Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards (classic, and yes, it’s really about contour)
“Contour Drawing Bootcamp” (Line of Action, free online drills)
“Pure Contour Drawing Exercises” on Proko YouTube
“The Natural Way to Draw” by Kimon Nicolaides (old school, all about the grind)