Original blind sketches in vector form

Blind Contour Drawings

Swati Sati
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

  1. 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.
  2. Scan the paper drawing into your computer or simply click a picture with a phone and transfer to the computer
  3. Open Adobe Illustrator and import the drawings.
  4. Use ‘Image Trace’ option to vectorize the drawings in BnW format. More the contrast, more fidelity.
  5. 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.
  6. The brush strokes need not to be perfect. The spilling outside the black outlines creates gives more personality to your drawing.
  7. 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. :)

A chick , an octopus and some fries
A toad, a latte and a donut
An Ice-Cream, a grizzly and a paint-bucket
A leaf, a snail and an alien

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.

Swati Sati

Written by

Geekchick. Designer. Learner. Coffee. Cosmo!

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