TIP 96 Easy Drawing Warm-Up: Relax Your Hand for Better Lines

When you start a drawing session, you may wonder why your first sketches are clumsy. Your hand muscles are not yet that agile. It’s good to start with a bit of warm up. For that, draw anything with a loose hand.

Warm Up drawing with a loose hand – Wacom Cintiq 22HD with Sketchbook Pro

00:01 Start drawing with simple shapes

00:04 Keep your hand loose

00:12 Draw with a moderate precision

00:15 We’ll adjust later

00:21 Use some light reflexion to the eyes

00:27 Add grey value using oblique hatching

00:31 Don’t follow the hair direction

00:42 Touch up to give more contrast

00:45 Using the bold pressure of the pen

Below is a quick tutorial on how I draw step-by-step.

I start with a vertical axis

A simple circle for the head

I add the Chin.

I like to continue with BOTH eyes. I don’t finish one eye to start an other. I purposely draw both together to make sure that both are aligned before adding more details in them.

Then the lips and the nose.

I readjust a bit the chin to make it more narrow.

I start to give the rough shape of the hair style like a “block”.

I draw the hair thinking of the weight. The hair start to curl below the chin.

Ok ! We got our main shape. Time to add some details and add values.

Time to ad some details to the eyes.

Think of adding a bit of light reflexion. It’s just a blank ellipse that partly hide the pupils.

A bit of touch up to give more contrast to the overall.

Voila, for the quick sketch of the day. I often start a drawing session drawing something that is not that accurate but beneificial for a good start.

If you havn’t draw for a while (few weeks for example), at the opposite you can plan to warm up with “precision exercises”. Instead of drawing with a loose hand, trace straight lines, ellipses and circles. You will help your brain to recalibrate with your pen.