Drawing techniques: Get Into the Flow of Drawing

An important step in the drawing process is to loosen your hand and mind before you draw, in order to allow your drawing to be as creative as possible. Elaine Clayton gives a couple of techniques to loosen your mind, stating that "It is a way of activating the total mind as it works in unity..."

 All you need for this exercise is a blank piece of paper. Pretend that your pencil is a figure skater, and the paper, a frozen pond, drag the pencil across the paper continuously "skating" across the page. Play around with speed and pressure of your line. When you are done, try to identify any shapes you made. Here is my example of the exercise:

A second technique Elaine suggests is playing with line gradation, or the change from one type of line, to the complete opposite line; for example, light to dark. Here is my exercise:

These drawing warm-ups will help you to draw concisely, accurately, and intentionally. Do you have any warm-ups you do before you draw? Let me know if you have any, and thanks for reading!

Clayton, Elaine. Making Marks: Discover the Art of Intuitive Drawing. Atria Paperback, 2014.