Category: Observation

I love summer not because we are “off” but because we get to jump start and fine tune our rhythm of routine. We get to be outdoors. And this summer that fact, connected to our policy of TQM equaled a thriving garden, well, that plus plenty of water and regular food for our little green friends (thanks for mentoring us Sara).

When my boys came in a few weeks ago with a larger than life-sized squash that appeared over night in the garden, you know, the kind that was not quite ready to pick yesterday and has become a snack for Gargantua over night, the kind that is just too tough for a delicate meal, I ask, “How 'bout grate the mutant into another modified version of zucchini bread?”

A resounding, “No…!”

“Okay, we'll make art!”

So we pull out the sketch pads for an impromptu art session. Because squash (especially in this overgrown state) will last on our counter indefinitely, they are perfect objects to accent a still life composition. But this curvaceous object, I decided, was perfect for contour drawing. So we set out on a visual journey, observing the delicate contours of this enormous vegetable.

Contour drawings show the outline of an object. Blind contour drawings are those created by looking only at the subject, not the paper, while drawing and to make matters more complicated, without lifting the pencil. One continuous line, this is the goal in a perfect world. This practice helps develop eye-hand coordination, helps to train the brain to listen to the eyes and to send the proper message to the pencil whose job it is to put marks on paper. Changes in form and space are tough to detect, this exercise allows the artist to get the eye, the brain, and the muscles to be on the same page.

My dear friend, painter and art mentor extraordinaire, Sandra, has been teaching me the value of contour drawing for many years, “Listen with your eyes,” that's what she says. At least that's where she begins. Here is where that little opener leads:

Putting the effort, (even if it is a little uncomfortable!), into the the practice of contour drawing is important for a few reasons.

• Primarily, it works to strengthen observation skills, (drawing what one actually sees, as opposed to what the brain “knows”).
• Blind contour assists in becoming “shape sensitive”… instead of drawing a nose… follow the contour curving left, then sharp turn right…
• Lastly, It's fun, (if you embrace it)!!!

Whenever I struggle with a sketch… I'm not getting the correct gesture or tilt of the head or shape if the eye and shadow shape…

I switch my brain over to contour mode and rely on my eyes to tell my hand what to do. Right and left brain work together: Right brain follows the contours of shape, left brain analyzes where the shape relates to other shapes.

You can clearly see that she practices what she preaches. This is one of her contours.

This is where her rhythm of routine leads:


Since we live miles and miles apart, she mentors me via iPhone. My youngest son, Søren has been drawing all summer. When I sent Sandra his recent contour, he was tickled to read her encouragement:

“Soren's contour from last night is really good! Those undulations can be challenging, the tendency is to let the brain say, ‘…ya, ya, I know… up and down, up and down…blah blah blah…’. It looked like he was
really letting his eyes inform him! Keep it up!”

Sandra will be pleased to know that after 25+ years, I am beginning to recognize the value of this foundational skill. In fact, Søren and I have committed to a year of as close to daily contour drawing as possible. We will see where this goal lands us. My larger plan is to incorporate contour drawing into science workshops at my co-op this fall—15 minutes of observational drawing. I am sure Leonardo would nod approvingly, but his eyes would not stray from the subject at hand!

Click here for a really creative lesson from Lori over at the inspiring Camp Creek Blog, on how to begin blind contour drawing with younger children.

– Kim

One morning as students began streaming in under the weight of backpacks popping at the seams. I recognized immediately that I would have to start scheduling time slots so that hours on end were not consumed with Show and Tell. Watching students take turns pulling mysterious objects from backpacks and spilling exuberance into the room made me wonder, "What if sharing can somehow be empowered with purpose beyond the obvious public speaking opportunity?"

Small observations have large consequence. The Earth is heliocentric. Galileo, defending the observations of Copernicus before him, came to realize this truth after careful observations of the sky over time. From botany to astronomy, let's face it, the basis of all science begins with observation.

So at the end of that busy day, as our children contentedly rampaged in the great outdoors, a friend and I punched holes in a stacks of cardstock, rummaged for binders, and with a click of the rings the Observation Journal was born. Show and Tell would never be the same.

The goal of the activity would be simple: Provide the student with an opportunity to slow down, an opportunity in this warp speed culture to discover and ponder the reflections in a spoon, a meandering hermit crab, or the pomegranate’s true color.

The next day we gathered our co-op children together and had them sit in a circle on the floor. We handed each child their own journal and placed a pumpkin in the middle of the group. We were ready to guide them in their very first lesson.

Guiding them to draw, line by line, shape by shape, what they were looking at was just the trick to get them thinking with their eyes. We began with a pumpkin. Together we discovered that the lines on the pumpkin were not parallel, but luscious curves that meet at the top and the bottom of the fruit. We looked again and discovered that those lines were not really lines at all, but grooves. We decided that this particular pumpkin was more oblate than spherical and that was taller than it was wide. The skin was smooth but the stem was prickly.

This is the point where I gave pencils permission to begin sketching, lightly at first, then darker as the image begins to mirror the real thing. When it was time to place watercolor on top of the pencil image, Sara demonstrated how to create the complex pumpkin color that is never really just orange from the paint tin. With orange and yellow with a touch of its compliment, blue, plus a drop of a warm brown for fall she taught the how to make a color puddle sing!

As the children were washing their pumpkin sketches with paintbrushes, the table was set with books about pumpkins for them to discover facts. Out on the porch a galvanized tub was filled to the brim with water ready for dunking and near the sink a space was prepared for pumpkin dissection. As our group moved on to discover a mountain of information about pumpkins through books and hands-on exploration, exclamations galore echoed from one corner of the room to the next, "Pumpkins float!" After separating seeds from gooey web and placing them into by piles of ten, the students counted close one thousand in all. They washed, roasted, and indulged in a homemade snack while quietly writing discoveries in their journal.

The activity transformed sharing from, "This is my teddy bear that lives above my books on the high shelf," to, "This is a centipede I found in the garden, let's go get out our Observation Journal." 

Today I gave Søren the job of dusting window sills. Quick as lightening.

“All done Mom.”

“Great, thanks buddy.”

About an hour later, concerned by a large slice of silence, I wandered into the kitchen and discovered my son at the table with his sketching gear examining a dead June Bug strategically posed on a paper plate. 

Windowsill booty.

“Wow Søren, what's all this?”

“Remember that beetle at the Getty mom?”

One word: Observation.

Need I say more?