Lesson Two - Warm Up Exercises
In our previous lesson we covered the basic drawing materials and their uses. In this lesson we will demonstrate several warm up exercises that will help loosen your shoulder movements. Do these exercises every time you are going to draw and you will improve the flow of your lines. Also always remember to never draw with your wrist, but your shoulder. You can incorporate wrist movements along with shoulder movements, but when you draw you should move your entire arm.
Using several sheets of scrap paper fill each with the type of lines listed below.
Draw diagonal lines. At first just draw your line as straight at you can. After a while try to draw the lines equally spaced from each other.
Draw horizontal lines. You can also practice keeping the space the same between each line.
Draw both diagonal and horizontal lines. Have fun and include offset parallel lines.
Draw scribble lines. Alter your direction and size of your scribbles.
Now we will work on shapes.
Draw squares. You can overlap them or keep them separate.
Draw circles going clockwise (left to right). Then draw them going counterclockwise (right to left).
You can continue doing the same as above with various other shapes, cylinders, ovals, etc. Or you can fill in the entire page with lines going one direction.
Notice how the first image has lines of various kinds yet we were trying to achieve a more circular image. Second image is a little better and the third image has a more cohesive array of lines with a few strays. Try this with triangles, squares, etc.
The max amount of time you should spend on these exercises is 5 to 10 minutes. You can split each section into 5 minutes or concentrate more on various parts of each section. Also since it is recommended that you warm up each time you are going to draw consider making each session more complex. You can draw cubes instead of squares or you can include a section of quick gesture drawings. But above all else do not worry if your lines are crooked or your shapes not accurate, you are loosening your arm movements.
The more you do this the more you will improve.