It's Friday! That means I'm only one bus away from not having to take the bus until next week.

You know, the bus is my main form of transportation in Seattle and I sometimes use the commuting time to sketch.

Lately, I've been practicing semi-blind contours of fellow passengers engrossed in their reading or lost in their own thoughts.

A pure blind contour means you keep your eye in the subject and draw without looking at the paper. In a semi-blind contour, you can look at the paper while you draw, but the idea is to do it as little as possible. In both cases, it helps to keep the pen on the paper and draw in a continuous flow.

For these mini sketches I use a 2.5" x 4" Moleskine Volant mini notebook and alternate between my Lamy Safari Fountain pen, a Uniball Vision pen or a pencil, whatever tool I happen to have in my shirt pocket at the moment.

Let me know if you try this. It's a great exercise to improve your hand-eye coordination!