Surviving Nicolaides—suggestion #1


I see why people have either started the Nicolaides curriculum and stopped it soon after or haven't gotten far. The first two schedules of 15 hours are full of a tedious exercise—blind contour drawings. I have read elsewhere, however, that doing regular blind contour drawings is a genuinely helpful exercise in training one's eye-hand coordination. Now that I've completed about ten hours of blind contours, I can offer some suggestions on how to get through them without losing your mind.

First, choose an object with a lot of texture. For example, one of my favorite blind contour subjects is a crumpled paper bag. With all of those lines and folds, neither your eye nor your brain will become bored, at least not too quickly. Other options: a bumpy rock (I use a volcanic rock I found in Colorado), wilted lettuce, bones (I have a real cow's head a full-sized fake human skeleton. I like to use the foot and hand bones in particular), tree bark, your hand. Usually an organic object that has texture works best.

Second, keep in the back of your mind as you're drawing that—despite the seeming uselessness of this exercise—ultimately it will improve your drawing.

Just keep going!