Why I love drawing warmups

I loved drawing as a kid, but like a lot of people, I stopped drawing around third or fourth grade and then continued not drawing because I "wasn't good."

The thing that kept me from drawing as a preteen/teen/young adult (fear of not being good) is the same thing that sometimes still keeps me from picking up a pen(cil) these days, despite having finally realized drawing is a skill you can learn.

Fear. I'm afraid to make a bad thing. Even though making a lot of bad things is how you learn to make good things.

The fix: Warming up like it's a workout

I don't lift heavy in the gym without warming up. I don't get on the ice and throw a double salchow before warming up both off and then on the ice. Singers don't perform without doing vocal warmups (I think 😅).

It turns out warmup exercises are just as important for drawing! They wake up your mind/hand connection and for me, they force me to get over myself and make things that suck. They also help me loosen up for the "real" drawing I want to do that day.

The exercises

I took a nature journalling workshop through the Denver Audubon Society earlier this year. The instructor taught us three different warmup exercises:

1. Blind sketching: look only at the reference and do not look at your page at all.
2. Continuous line drawing: you can look at your page, but you can't pick up your pencil.
3. Timed drawing, also known as gestural drawing: you can look at your page and you can lift your pencil, but you only have 30 seconds.

Blind sketching in particular produces some hilarious results:

My favorite drawing warmup exercise

I love gestural drawing! It's so much fun! It makes me laugh to see some of the things I create in 30 seconds.

It also helps a lot with loosening up.

My favorite art from others is art that feels like it has movement and freedom that comes from loose, expressive lines and strokes. But I tend to draw things that feel tight and controlled because I will often focus on getting every detail accurate. Even though my goal is not scientific illustration!

When I start with gestural drawing, it helps me loosen up because you absolutely cannot create anything in 30 seconds without committing to your lines, drawing them quickly and loosely.

I usually start with a few 30-second drawings, then I sometimes gradually increase the time up to about three minutes. This way, I can add more and more detail while still needing to stay loose because three minutes is still not long at all.

On this sketchbook page, I actually started with the 20-minute drawing and THEN did the three-minute drawings, but it is a good example of what I mean. I strongly prefer the roadrunner on the bottom right even though it has far less detail and was done in far less time.

A few other gestural drawing example pages! Apologies if the pencil is difficult to see.

Finally, here are a couple pages of quick sketches I did to warm up while sketching on location at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park. I didn't time these, but I tried to use the same principles and keep them fast and loose.

Do you like warming up before drawing? What are your favorite warm-up exercises? Let me know in the comments (subscribers only) or messaging me on socials (Bluesky | Twitter | Instagram). 😊