DRAWING EXERCISES FOR BEGINNERS

What could also help you progress is reading the article on how to learn to draw, available on our blog. Another article that might be useful is the one on creating easy drawings, so for those interested, feel free to take a look! ;)

EXERCISES TO IMPROVE YOUR PENCIL STROKE

This first series of exercises isn't super attractive, I know, but it pays off :3

LINES

This simply involves drawing straight lines without a ruler or any other help. Just freehand. Try to be as consistent as possible. The difficulty increases as the format gets larger and the line becomes longer.

Why do this exercise?

Quite simply to learn how to draw straight lines freehand, which is very practical for objects and backgrounds, in addition to the fact that you will better master your movements. You will quickly notice that you don't draw a small straight mark and a long straight line the same way. It also allows you to identify at which angle you are best at drawing your straight lines :3

CIRCLES

The same principle as before applies to circles and ellipses. Vary the sizes and angles, and look for the most comfortable method to draw regular circles, ellipses, and nice curves. This exercise in particular will be especially useful as soon as you need to draw objects. Because if you don't know how to do ellipses... well, you just don't know how to do them. There are no tricks to fix the problem. While we have compasses for circles, ellipses are much more complicated.

In this case, here, my circles are very irregular if I try to draw them in a single stroke. But they are much more regular when I do them piece by piece (bottom right). The same goes for my ellipses ^^

Therefore, prefer to create this type of shape in several goes. The result indeed looks less clean, but it will allow you to have greater precision during your final cleanup.

HATCHING

Here too, the goal is to find the method you prefer and make the hatching as regular as possible. To get beautiful flat tints or nice gradients with hatching, you have to be extremely consistent.

Well, that was for the purely practical side. It is quite off-putting, but when you start drawing, it is something quite useful to do, even if it is not very thrilling. Gradually you will get better and better at it, and it will help you go faster and be more efficient on your real drawings.

By varying the direction of your hatching as well as its intensity, this also allows you to explore different textures that can be used for your future illustrations.

EXERCISES TO IMPROVE YOUR SENSE OF OBSERVATION

For this, the king of exercises is, of course, observational sketching. I remind everyone that a sketch is not supposed to be finished or clean. Seeing construction lines, having small errors, shaky lines, etc., is the whole point. Don't try to make something perfect; it's not an illustration.

Nevertheless, there are different ways to proceed.

SKETCHING UNDER CONSTRAINTS

First, we can start with a predetermined duration.

DRAWING WITHIN A TIME LIMIT

Ultra-fast sketch (between 10 and 30 seconds)

This is literally a gesture drawing. 10 seconds go by very, very fast. No time to dwell on details. This type of sketch is very useful for movement studies (when someone is moving). If you tend to draw stiff characters, this should help you greatly :D

Quick sketch (between 45 seconds and 3 minutes)

This time, the timing is more comfortable. But it’s still tight—no time to dawdle! This time, you can dwell a bit more on details, but not that much. We stay with something quite lively. If you are doing hands and feet, for example, by the time you draw the fingers with their joints, assuming you don't make a mistake: that's it, you've hit 3 minutes. For me, this is the most useful type of sketch that forces you most to synthesize the structure of things while maintaining enough detail so it can be reused directly afterward in an illustration.

Example here with series of one-minute sketches.

Medium sketch (between 5 and 10 minutes)

This time, we have more room. This timing is used more for complex poses that would be difficult to do with a shorter timing. It is also quite useful if you want to add volume and light information, for example, with gray values.

Long sketch (between 15 and 30 minutes)

In my opinion, these are sketches that can stretch up to about thirty minutes. These are the ones that stray the furthest from what a sketch is, because the more time you have, the more you can polish. Nevertheless, they are useful for complex models such as certain buildings, for example.

In this case, it is a type of sketch that will push you to focus on details, whereas the previous ones focus on general shape, structure, and movement.

TESTING OTHER WAYS OF DRAWING

Without lifting the pencil

The rule is quite clear, I think: from the moment you place the pencil / pen / marker / other on the paper to start drawing, you don't lift it anymore. This will give a very particular look and force you to think differently because, obviously, if you have to go back over your lines to avoid drawing random marks across your image, you will lose time on an already short timing :D

In negative

You take a black sheet, or a white sheet (rough side of Canson paper) that you cover with charcoal, and you draw in negative. For those on a black sheet, use white paint, for example. For those on charcoal, use an eraser and charcoal. You are therefore forced to draw the lights and no longer the shadows as we usually do. The results are super interesting :3

Without an eraser

Or rather, without erasing or with a tool that cannot be erased. So either a pencil without an eraser, or a marker, a pen, paint, ink, etc. The objective is quite clear: find the right lines immediately and too bad if you make a mistake. It will serve as a construction line; it can even add to the charm of your sketch ;p That said, you will quickly notice that you generally don't have time to erase anyway :D

From a moving model

Whether by sitting at a terrace and observing what is around you, going to a zoo to see animals, or staying warm at home and starting a dance video, for example, it is very interesting to sketch something in motion and not from a photo that has already done the work for you.

It is much more complicated and requires you to be very fast. We are in the realm of live sketching if the movement is fast. You will have to choose the right moment in the movement. Almost take a mental photograph of the scene or draw without looking at your paper to be able to transcribe your model faithfully.

Sketches also have the benefit of forcing you to look at your model very often to be able to copy it, and that is a very good habit to get into ^^

If you don't have the opportunity to do life drawing sessions (and especially nudes) near you, know that there are YouTube channels specialized in this, like Croquis Café. You also have the site Line of Action, which allows you to choose your timing and the subject you want to sketch (animals included) ;p Very practical, tested and approved!

EXERCISES TO IMPROVE YOUR UNDERSTANDING AND COLORS

This follows the same principle as sketching but without a time limit and much more polished. The principle is simple: you choose a reference of your choice (a still life, a live model, a photo, or a movie screenshot) and you try to reproduce your model as faithfully as possible. The time you spend on it is not important. The goal is to transcribe things as best as possible.

I have included two old landscape studies I did, for which I unfortunately can no longer find the original references.

There you go, you now have all the keys to making beautiful things and improving your drawing :D

Obviously, there are thousands of interesting exercises. I have given you a few leads that you can follow and, of course, draw inspiration from to imagine your own exercises.