Drawing Exercises to Keep Your Creative Mind Busy!

Drawing is something that absolutely everyone can do, there are many limitations you feel you may come across, but we can assure you there is a way for you to enjoy drawing, lose yourself in it, get creative, and want to come back too. Here’s the thing though, drawing may come along with an art block. Sometimes you may not know what to draw and it just gets the better of you because you think if you;re going to be spending your time drawing it has to be worthwhile with a masterpiece at the end of the time you;ve dedicated to doing it. Drawing can be fun, and just to put some time away, to practise new things, and to simply enjoy in a time where you may not get to do your usual activities. You may be used to drawing, just may have trouble focusing for lo9ng periods of time, I just need to come away from that one piece you;ve been working on for weeks and look at something new. Either way we hope we can help you, we’ve got some interesting ideas. 

Starting off with something incredibly simple, and just some fun. Doodling. Anyone can doodle, anyone can draw simple shapes and lines. It truly is as easy as putting your pen to paper. You can sketch whatever randomly comes to mind. You can not even be looking past the paper, just let your mind wander whilst your pen does whatever it wants on the page. Maybe you’re on a phone call. That is always a good time to start doodling because you can pull from the conversation random little doodles and drawings. This exercise can help you process ideas, and figure out what you want from your drawings. Whether you want to pick up more sketchy styles, or more line art styles. Doodling is a good place to start as you can do whatever you want with your space with nor restrictions. 

Going over to something that may be completely infuriating but also super silly too. Drawing with your non-dominant hand. Whether you're right or left handed, swap. It may seem silly and won;t help you progress, but it is a great exercise to learn your styles and also to gain more movement in your non-dominant hand. Who knows, if you do it enough you could become ambidextrous. By using your non-dominant hand you’re allowing yourself to not be so strict with your lines and space, this helps also for when you go back to your dominant hand to assess your space differently and what you can do with it. Fun exercises include having a piece of paper under each hand and a pen in each too. Try drawing the same image with both hands at the same time and mostly fun differences if you've just started with your non-dominant hand. 

This exercise is great for those that draw from what they know, rather than what they see. Say you;re drawing a face, you know what two eyes, a nose, mouth, eyebrows, etc all look like. You know a very basic idea of what those features look like . However as you know, every single human is different, and it’s not easy to get those proportions right if you;re setting everything to what you know. A great way to come away from this is to use a reference and draw it upside down. This will completely take your control away of what you think’ a face should look like. By drawing it upside down your brain doesn;t recognise it as a face, and it will leave you to look at how the lines flow and how the shadows hit different parts of the face. This exercise doesn't have to be just on a person, you can try drawing anything upside down. 

This last exercise is my favourite as it means you’ll be drawing similar things all day and it will allow you to see how you change your drawings throughout the day to make them different, better, or in other styles. This idea is based on having a theme for every single day, a new one. This can be restricted to an object, or can be something as simple as a colour or emotion. So if you want to learn to draw particular things, try drawing only that for an entire day, even when you go to doodle. You’ve got a notepad here and you’re sitting on a long phone call. Don’t just doodle anything, draw and redraw that theme for the day. It will help you see how you;re doing, if you;re making the same mistakes or if you;re progressing in your skills. This also brings a lot of variety to your work. Say everytime you draw you draw an eye, or an apple. Try setting out a new theme for a whole month, and see how you go trying it every single day. Avoid objects and things that you know very well, as then it isn;t such a challenge. There are many apps, books, websites, and email signups you can use to help with your daily theme if you haven’t necessarily got a lot of ideas to work with.

We hope these exercises can be fun, silly, and actually helpful. Whether you want to escape that art block for a bit, better your skills, or just want something to do other than be on your phone all day. Let us know if you have any other fun drawing exercises you use to help you out!