For this project participants were asked to draw a self portrait while also being drawn in a style called blind contour. Participants used a mirror to draw a self portrait, while being drawn by someone else sitting across from them. The initial idea of the project was to create two pictures of someone, drawn with the same technique in a way that breaks them from any shorthand or styles they may have developed. These two pictures in turn would present two images of a person, one slightly biased and one slightly unbiased.
Blind contour drawing is a technique used by artists to practice coordination of the movement of the hand with the eye. Essentially, it trains the artist to draw what they see, at the same speed that they perceive it, breaking the preconceived notions one may have about what an object is supposed to look like. This is achieved through the “blind” aspect of the exercise, in that the subject cannot look down at their drawing until it is finished.
What became apparent as the project went on was not exactly the images themselves, but rather how participants felt. The act of drawing oneself is incredibly personal, and removing the ability for the participant to “check” the drawing as it developed brought on many strong emotions, from frustration and stress to amusement and relaxation. Participants had varied experiences with self portraiture, ranging from professional artists to people who had never drawn a self portrait. These images, coupled with an impartial portrait done by the facilitator of the exercise, ended up not only reflecting on self image, but the emotion of the experience.
This project was conducted in the spring semester of 2020 as a senior thesis project for the Residential College of Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. I would like to thank Dave Sheridan for all the guidance he provided to this project, as well as all the participants for their thoughts, artwork, and time.
–Kelsie Lane, April 2020