One fun exercise you can try to get you started is Continuous Line Drawing. For this exercise you cannot lift your pen or pencil off the page while drawing, hence the “continuous line”.
This will force you to really look at your subject and the lines it is made of. Besides, you won’t expect the drawing to be perfect so that will take the pressure off!
Another version of this exercise is the Blind Contour Line Drawing which has many benefits. To start with it improves hand-eye coordination; second, it again forces you to really look at the object you are drawing and of course it will help you understand that drawing is all about observation (drawing is at least 50% observation).
The rules for Blind Contour Line Drawing are:
1) you cannot lift the pencil or pen off the sketchbook once you start drawing
2) you may not look at the paper
So you should try and move your pencil or pen at the same speed as your eyes move over the contours of the object you are drawing. The best part is, you can do this exercise virtually anywhere!
So try these exercises and, most importantly, draw every day and you’ll see great improvements over time.
So do you think you can’t draw? Have you stopped yourself from even trying for fear of not being able to produce a nice drawing?
Let me know your thoughts and experience in the comments below.
Till next time
Create and be happy
xox