Learn to love drawing warm ups. Warm up drills are overlooked just about everywhere. Similar to weightlifting, many people jump straight into their workout routine.
No thought to the consequences of placing stress on their muscles, tendons, joints, and nervous system. It’s too bad; they’re missing out on reducing risk and longevity.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” you might say. “Drawing and weightlifting are nowhere near the same.”
You would be right. But drawing warm ups can be compared to sports and weightlifting in the sense that you are using (and warming up) your drawing muscles.
The powerful aspect of using warm ups before you begin your drawings is that they will help sharpen your sketching strokes: straight lines; curves; circles; boxes; and ellipsis.
You will draw more confidently and begin to capture energy in your sketches.
Before I tell you about the basic warm up drills, I want to warn you that they might seem simple but don’t underestimate their power.
These warm up drawings can be likened to basic jab and cross drills in boxing. They might seem simple and boring, but with enough practice, you can knock the lights out of most people.
I do not recommend it, but you get my point.
Now I have “warmed” you up with my long intro; it’s time for some drawing drills. Keep reading and enjoy.
Contents
My Drawing Warm Ups Video Demonstration
Two Points: Drawing Straight Lines
The power of dots. In the image below, I have drawn dots on one side and the other side extending with each period.
Make sure to draw using your shoulders and ghost over the lines. You can refer to my video above and see how I move my entire arm as I draw. This method will develop control.
Pro Tip: Ghosting over your lines means moving your arm like you are drawing without placing your pencil down. “Ghost over” several times to get a feel for the line you are about to commit.
This first exercise aims to help you draw straight lines and focus on hitting two points at once.
The straight lines are obvious because you will use this skill to your advantage a million times over in your drawings.
It’s an incredible feeling to draw straight lines without the need for a ruler (unless it’s precise drafting lines).
You might be wondering what’s the point of the dots. They are important. Most objects you will design can be controlled using dots.
Placing dots and connecting them will help control your drawings. You can see the freehand boxes I drew below.
Try to use your imagination for how a box can be transformed into a building, a hand-held product, or your next character design of a king sitting on his throne.
After doing 15 to 20 of them (or however many you’re comfortable doing), it’s time to move on to three-point drawing curves.
Three points: Drawing a Curve
Vehicle design. That should summarize why curves are super important.
And not just limited to car designs, but anything with curves—especially man-made ones.
Vehicle design, architecture, and industrial design come to mind when I think of curves I must control (even at the freehand stage) before different rulers emerge.
I understand you might want to draw your own things and are not planning to go into a professional field where drawing curves becomes an asset.
All I am doing is sharing the drills that I have found to be the most useful and beneficial.
You might never have to draw strong, solid curves, but it’s a warm up that gives you confidence when sketching freehand.
Speaking of freehand, let’s get “straight” into it.
Freehand Straight Lines
Freehand. No dots. Now you can draw straight lines without worrying about placing drops at each end.
The only difference in this drawing warm up I want you to imagine is an imaginary wall on each end of your line. Choose how long your line should be.
Then pull each line end-to-end. Respect the distance from above each line you draw and reduce the distance gap as you build more control. I know this is tough, but I am helping you build control.
It’s going to be awkward and annoying. No doubt. But it’s worth it over time. After doing some side-to-side drawing warm ups, it’s time for top-to-bottom.
Freehand Top to Bottom
Same concept as the above warm up, except you move your hand from top-to-bottom.
Artists might argue that you only need to train your hand to draw at one angle. That’s definitely a strong point, but from my experience, many times, for the sake of speed and not being able to spin my sketchbook, drawing straight lines from top to bottom has been a great benefit.
It’s another skill when you have to sketch at awkward angles.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be tied down to being able to draw at certain angles and restricted by the rest. Side-to-side is great, but top-to-bottom is a nice compliment.
Why not go a step further? Hope you like Ferris wheels.
Ferris Wheel
I created this drawing warm up as far as I am aware. I call it a Ferris wheel because of its resemblance.
As I mentioned, having zero restrictions when drawing is nice. Regardless of sitting, standing, sketching on a canvas, or rushing through a sketch.
Knowing your hand (and arm) has been trained to draw lines from all angles is a cool feeling. That’s why I created this basic drawing warm up wheel.
Start by drawing a large circle to the best of your ability. Place a dot in the center. Then pull out lines from the dot all the way to the edge of the circle.
Pick a direction (clockwise or counterclockwise) and draw from your shoulder.
You can also do the reverse: Pull lines from the circle’s edge back to the dot. You might have to ghost over your lines for this one.
If you’ve made it this far, congrats. Let’s move on to something more challenging by compiling most of what we have learned with drawing boxes.
Drawing Warm Ups with 3D Boxes
It all starts with a box. I was in traditional animation for a semester in college, and I remember my super-strict layout teacher repeatedly saying, “When in doubt, box it out.”
He was right.
Whenever you are faced with a design challenge—whether characters, props, or environments—you can always place that element inside a box.
Perhaps it will take some time for some of you to digest that maxim. For now, trust me.
Back to warm up drawings. Start with placing two dots apart and try to connect them as you did in the first straight-line drill.
Spinning your paper for this exercise is best. Then visualize where the box will sit in perspective (in space). You might mess this up many times over, and it’s okay. Believe me, I am a pro at not getting it right.
Work out all the knots; thus, create more believability in your picture-making.
Then place an X running from corner to corner to divide your planes. It’s another good practice because you will divide many of your sketches to keep them under control when “moving in space.”
I would advise watching me demonstrate it in my video above. And don’t worry if what I just said didn’t make much sense; I’ll probably post about it later.
If you have come this far, I would challenge you to try and draw an ellipse (circle in perspective) within each plane surface of your box.
See my video demonstration at the start of this article as an example. Speaking of ellipses, let’s also look into doing some of them.
Ellipse Using a Wall
Ellipse degrees. Draw two parallel lines with space in between. Then freehand ellipses. Start from small degrees all the way close to a full circle.
So, it’s a good idea to get comfortable drawing them freehand. They don’t have to be perfect when doing your drawing warm ups but they will come in handy. I say that with confidence.
Also, another challenge you can add for yourself is drawing each ellipse and touching the previous ellipse.
Kind of like a corner meeting corner as I was trying out my drawing warm ups video demonstration.
I have one more ellipse challenge for you: this time, no walls.
Ellipse No Wall
If you have been patient up to this point and would like another dare, how about doing ellipses the same way as above?
But this time, use no walls—but keep the walls in mind—as you sketch. Another control warm up drawing for you.
My last and most relaxing yet brutally challenging drawing warm up. Circles.
Freehand Circles
No need for a compass. At least not for freehand drawing warm ups doing circles.
Relax, and visualize how a circle should look as you sketch different circle sizes. You can use the same corner-to-corner method here for more control development.
As you can see, anywhere I left a gap (unintentionally), I would go to that section and try to draw smaller circles.
As you fill-up the page, you may feel your shoulder starting to burn. You can take a short break whenever you think it’s much needed.
Let me circle you into some tips to help digest all this without turning it into something far more complicated when it’s all meant to be simple drawing warm ups.
Drawing Warm Up Tips
- Take printer paper, or any (cheap) paper for that matter. Do all the drawing warm up exercises at best using both sides of the paper.
- Spend between five to fifteen minutes at the moment; for you hardcore ones, 20 minutes is also acceptable.
- After doing this for some time, you should be comfortable dropping your drawing warm up time and spend less time doing warm ups and more time drawing.
- It’s going to be uncomfortable at first. Stick with it. You’ll be thankful in the long run.
- Enjoy doing them. They are meant to be relaxing and get you warmed up, and ready for your actual drawing sessions.
As if I just wrote over 1700 words about drawing warm ups. Anyway, I’ll conclude all this and have you on your way.
Conclusion
Drawing warm ups no different than warm up drills before playing your sport or lifting weights.
The one major difference is that warm up drawings help build your drawing muscles. They will eventually become internalized, and you will sketch with much more fluidity; your lines will have energy, and you will love sketching more than ever.
