Contour Drawing Helps Me to Better See What I Want to Paint - Frederick Franck on Zen Drawing

Zinnia
Jacki Kellum Contour Drawing
June 20, 2025

Contour Drawing is a type of meditation that strips away all the illusions of what I think are there and allows me to see what is actually there. I start every painting session with the act of contour drawing.

I consider it a great fortune that I discovered Frederick Franck’s book, Zen Seeing Zen Drawing, over half a century ago. That book molded the way that I approach both my thinking and my art. Both in writing and in art, the ability to fully see is essential.

Don’t Just Look — See!

Franck has written several books about drawing meditatively. The following comes from his book The Zen of Seeing:

― Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing, pg. xi.

How to Draw in Blind Contour

― Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing, pg. xiv

― Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing, pg. xv.

“When drawing a face, any face, it is as if a curtain after curtain, mask after mask, falls away.. until a final mask remains, one that can no longer be removed, reduced. By the time the drawing is finished, I know a great deal about that face, for no face can hide itself for long. But although nothing escapes the eye, all is forgiven beforehand. The eye does not judge, moralize, criticize. It accepts the masks in gratitude as it does the long bamboos being long, the goldenrod being yellow.”― Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing

Zinnia Contour Drawing
June `13, 2025

My Contour Drawings are done without lifting my pen. I draw in long, uninterrupted lines. As I draw, I sense that I am touching what I am drawing. I dig until I feel the subject.

One of my friends on Facebook commented on the above zinnia contour drawing as follows: “There’s so much movement here, but it looks like the flower is dancing.” Those words pleased me. My goal with all of my art is to capture the vitality of movement–of life. This is easiest when I am drawing plants and trees. I look until I feel the way the plant is bending–I feel it in my own spine–and then, I strive to capture that–first in my contour drawings.

― Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing, pg. xiv.

This is easiest when I am drawing plants and trees. I look until I feel the way the plant is bending–I feel it in my own spine–and then, I strive to capture that,