
Blind Contour Drawings
Sep 6, 2018 · 3 min read
Blind contours are an excellent exercise that free up your hand from the judgments of the mind and draw purely from imagination.
Process Followed
- With your eyes closed, sketch what you are intrigued about (I had made a list of many assorted things and picked up a few to draw), on paper with a black ink pen, preferably Microns or gel pens as they are pretty rich and consistency is great.
- Scan the paper drawing into your computer or simply click a picture with a phone and transfer to the computer
- Open Adobe Illustrator and import the drawings.
- Use ‘Image Trace’ option to vectorize the drawings in BnW format. More the contrast, more fidelity.
- Do not color on top of the stroke. Create a layer underneath the black stroke layer and use Brush tool to colorize the layer behind the main drawing.
- The brush strokes need not to be perfect. The spilling outside the black outlines creates gives more personality to your drawing.
- Make sure to create a new layer for every new drawing otherwise you won’t be able to create the paint layer (as a sublayer)underneath the black original drawing layer. It’s good for organizing the layers too.

8. Group the color and the stroke layer together and Object > Expand Appearance.

Your contour drawings are now vectorized and ready to be used in various places and sizes of your liking. :)












One can use contour drawings to illustrate quickly for an article, making a web comic or just when you are feeling a creative block hitting you. I thoroughly enjoyed making and finishing these! I hope you too.
