Gather Materials:
- an artist’s journal, unlined notebook, or piece of paper
- pencil
Today’s Exercise
Today’s exercise comes from Sketchbook.com
This is the most basic of the basics, the most important skill in drawing. When you’re a child, you don’t really care about it so much—every drawing is a surprise for you, created by your brain and hand, but not by you. Now that you are not a child anymore, you have expectations towards your drawings, but you still may use the same technique as before: You push the pencil to the paper and hope for the best. But it doesn’t work!
No matter how silly it seems, you must come back to the basics. Can you draw a circle that looks mostly round, starts and ends at the same point? If not, why? Is this because you have no “talent” that would move your hand in a proper way? No—it’s only because you try to use such a talent as if it really existed. Focus on what you’re doing. Pay attention to the movement of your hand, see where it fails and how you can fix it. Frustrating as it is, so was learning how to write. Beginnings must be hard.
Drawing circles…within circles
- Draw a circle, or at least something resembling a circle. Don’t use an eraser and draw it with a continuous line.
- Draw a tiny circle in the centre.
- Draw a circle between these two, right in the middle of the distance, trying to achieve the same shape as them.
- Draw another circle right between these two…
- … and another one…
- … and another, until there’s no more space for the circles.
Image from Sketchbook.com
Now… do it again. Over and over again. Filling the page with circles within circles
Reflections on the Exercise
- This is really hard!
- I’m not sure if my my circles are better when I go fast or slow down
- I am going to practice doing this and see if I can improve my line control