While doing some background reading on Franck’s seeing/drawing books, I came across an interesting article by Paul Foxton called
The Truth about Seeing – And Why it Makes Drawing so Hard. This proposes that the way the eye is trained to move in blind drawing (or ‘blind contour drawing’, another term for the same thing) is contrary to the way the eye naturally skips over a scene, focusing on points of interest. This movement is known by a French term, saccade, and his site provides some illustrations of this from eye-tracking studies.

He acknowledges that the blind drawings have a pleasing “vibrant quality” but isn’t optimal for accuracy. I think I’d happily concede that point; most of the time, I’m happy to be drawing for the experience of observing and the potential for creating marks that I might share or use to inspire further creativity.