Blind Contour Drawing 2002

In 2002 I was obsessively drawing. My adopted mother Claudia Pettis gave me the gift of Kimon Nikolaide’s Natural Way to Draw. This is the book that Disney animators a century ago used to develop their skills of drawing. The first chapter is AMAZING and teaches you how to draw without looking at the paper. The technique is simple, the artist looks at a subject and finds a contour, then puts the pen down on the paper. When the artist believes that the pen tip is touching the subject, then the eye and hand move in coordination to document the shape of that contour. I fell in love with this style of drawing and would go to a couple figure drawing sessions a week at Daniel Smith’s Art Supply Shop and other studios around town. Some of my favorite drawing was at the Wet Spot, a sex positive community center. Once a month they would open their doors to artists and exhibitionists would try and impress artists with racy poses. The exhibitionists got seen and the artists got great subject matter and enthusiastic models, it was great. I would often feel compelled to draw but not have a human model, so I would go find heavy machinery. Front end loaders, trucks, and tractors to draw. I feel like I got good at drawing during this year. I was drawing 20+ hours a week and so likely got 1000 hours of drawing in that year. I made a few little zines at kinkos and sold prints at the monthly Seattle First Thursday event which was really just a bunch of artists putting out art on a blanket.