10 Creative Drawing Exercises to Improve Your Skills
Hey there fellow art lovers!
Are you looking for some fun and creative ways to improve your drawing skills? Well, you're in luck because I've put together a list of 10 fun drawing exercises that will have you sharpening your skills and flexing your creative muscles in no time.
These exercises are perfect for anyone, whether you're a beginner just starting out or an experienced artist looking to try something new. I love to give these types of exercises a go when i’m lacking a bit of inspiration, I find they help to kick your creative brain into gear a bit.
So, grab your favourite drawing tools and let's get started!
Blind Contour Drawing
Give drawing an object without looking at your paper a try. It's a great way to improve hand-eye coordination and train your brain to see things in a different way and a good fun. It’s quite difficult at first, but try drawing the same thing over and over and I bet you’ll be surprised at how you start to figure out where to draw the lines!Gesture Drawing
Gesture drawing involves capturing the essence of a subject's movement or pose in a short amount of time. It's a great way to loosen up and get your hand moving. Why not try setting yourself a timer when you give this one a go. Shorten the time each time for more of a challenge.Negative Space Drawing
This exercise involves drawing the space around an object rather than the object itself. It's a great way to improve your ability to see shapes and forms.One-Liners
This exercise involves drawing an object or scene using a single, continuous line. It's a great way to improve your hand control and encourage you to see subjects in a more abstract way.Continuous Line Drawing
Similar to one-liners, this exercise involves drawing an object using a single, continuous line, but with the added challenge of not lifting your pencil off the paper. It's a great way to improve your hand-eye coordination and focus.Crosshatching
Crosshatching involves drawing parallel lines that intersect to create shading and texture. It's a nice way to improve your understanding of light and shadow. I love using bits of crosshatching shading in my illustration work also.Value Scales
Try creating a scale of values from light to dark, Which helps to improve your shading skills and create more dynamic drawings. I like using pencils for this, start with a standard HB pencil and if you have more weights give those a try. Using coloured pencils is great to work up to, you could try blending from one colour into another as a challenge.Grid Drawing
Grid drawing is a way of breaking an image down into smaller squares and copying each square onto a larger grid. It can be a helpful way to improve your accuracy and observation skills when starting to learn how to draw more complex pieces or compositions.Continuous Tone Drawing
This exercise involves creating a drawing using only a single tone. It's a great way to improve your ability to create depth and dimension.Collaborative Drawing
Why not try working with another artist to create a drawing together. It's a great way to get inspired by someone else's style and learn from their techniques. One way of doing this could be to start the drawing off and pass it onto them to add on to. You could do this with as many people as you like, the outcomes are always so much fun to see unfold!
So there you have it, folks! 10 awesome drawing exercises to help improve your skills and have some fun along the way. I hope you give them a try and have fun seeing how much you can improve your drawing skills. I’d love to know in the comments how you found the tips.
Happy creating!
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