Drawing Exercise

Every person who has taken an art class knows that the teacher usually has you do some sort of exercise to master your drawing ability.  Of course, we all know that some people are better then others at this skill.  I am not the best when it comes to some of the exercises so bare with my drawings as I walk you through the different ways to practice and master your drawing skills.

First, let me start with the object I chose to draw.  A pineapple candle.  In college, my roommate and I picked this up at a garage sale because we read somewhere that the pineapple is the symbol of "hospitality".  So we knew that our home needed a pineapple to show our guests we were hospitable.  Years later, I have the pineapple candle in my home.

Blind Contour Drawing: 

drawing without ever looking at the paper you are drawing on.  This was the first of my drawing exercises today I wanted to show you.  This is the one I hated the most doing but it really challenges your hand-eye coordination.  You have to really think as you explore the object with your eyes and translate that onto the page.  Below is my attempt at this exercise after many years of avoiding ever doing it.  

Timed Gesture Drawing:

 a gesture drawing is completed quickly in timed intervals (20, 30, 60 seconds) using fast, expressive lines.  In order to do this, you need to break down the object into basic forms to capture it quickly onto your paper.  Below are my timed gesture drawings with the time I did to create them.  

I clearly moved quickly to get as much of the object on the page as possible.  

In this one, I thought I would have more time then I clearly did and focused more on the top.

Upset about the previous drawing I spent more time on the bottom then the top but managed to get more of the pineapple then before.

Continuous Line Drawing: 

when you never lift the drawing instrument from the paper.  So, you must continuously be moving the pencil from one part of the drawing to the next without lifting it.  This creates darker images unless you lighten your pressure on the pencil.  This I found hard mostly because I have been using dry erase board and marker for this exercise.  This one is good to help you really explore the object and understand it's shape in relation to itself.  Helping with proportions along the way.

Contour Drawing:

 shows outlines, shapes and edges of a scene, but omits fine detail. The best way to describe this technique is think of cartoons and how they only have the outlines of the character.  This one was hard for me because I wanted to add more detail but had to stop myself.  You want to show the basic shape of the object.

I hope you enjoyed this post and hope you will try some of these drawing exercises at home with an object in your home.  Maybe even get more daring and use a person to be your drawing subject.  This is a fun way to exercise and master your drawing skills.  The more you practice the better you will become.  As always I am here to help you be the best artist you can be!  Have fun drawing!

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