A GUIDE TO DRAWING suitable for BEGINNERS🌟12 WARM-UP exercises & LOTS OF TIPS

so for this week's video i'd like to talk about drawing and specifically how i maintain a regular practice i truly believe in going back into drawing regularly and i try and do a little bit of drawing every single day if i'm not in the mood to do a really intense observational type sketch which is hours of work then often to maintain a daily practice i will do some warm-up activities and fun doodles and drawings from my imagination and things like that and some of my warm-up activities might help someone who's always wanted to start drawing so maybe a complete beginner or somebody that hasn't been creative or drawn for quite some time and you just don't know quite how to get back into it so hopefully some of these tips and techniques can help you get back into or start a practice so i'm going to be talking about four different things in this video the first thing i'm going to be talking about is why do these warm-ups what are the main benefits of them the second thing i'm going to be talking about is how to do it and some frequently asked questions the third thing is going to be what the actual exercises are and i will be sharing with you and demonstrating my top 12 most useful warm-up activities and then finally i'm going to just tell you about a few other things that you can try with some final notes and tips and techniques to leave you with so i hope you find this video useful and let's get started so why do these warm-ups what are the main benefits well first of all they are a muscle warm-up which improves your dexterity and motor skills it warms up your fingers hands wrists and shoulders and really improves your line work also it extends your mark making vocabulary so you'll end up making marks that you wouldn't expect or usually do it also activates muscle memory so when you draw something so regularly that you no longer need to think about it therefore the brain doesn't need to work so hard it won't get tired as quickly so your drawing stamina improves as well and the whole thing becomes easier and easier warm ups also activates the right brain which quietens the mind and acts like a kind of meditation it gives the brain a chance to change gears and get into drawing mode and so this hidden benefit is very relaxing it helps anxiety reduces stress and is really good for your mental health so part two is how do i do it and here are a couple of frequently asked questions how long do i need to do a drawing warm-up for so my suggestion would be to practice between five and thirty minutes see what works for you try to aim for 20 minutes though if you're just starting out you'll get to know what works best for you the more you continue so how often do you need to do these warm-ups then every day if possible and the more regularly you practice these warm-ups the more used to flicking between right and left brain activities you will become so if you draw every day you'll probably find that you need less time to do the warm-ups as you carry on so grab yourself a cheap notepad or a sketchbook i would suggest around an a4 or a3 size and something to draw with so a pen pencil chalk charcoal etc in my experience the most useful exercises activate muscles and brain simultaneously they also need to be simple enough so you don't get into the feeling of frustration when you do bad sketches or drawings it's best to do a mixture of lines curves and shading so let's get into the actual drawing practices so number one i like to do some straight lines and i like to activate my whole arm and shoulder when i do this so i'm doing lines with different directions different lengths and trying to stay fairly parallel to the previous line that i've made i like to go over the top of this page as well with like a star in the middle and that gets my wrist going in all directions without me moving the page now i move on to swirls and spirals and loops and i change direction and do them of varying sizes as well and then when i've done a big spiral i do little spirals in the middle and fill in the gaps as well and i work all over the page again activating my whole arm shoulder and wrist after that i like to do a page of squares and rectangles again i change directions so that my wrist is moving one way and then another and i overlap my rectangles and squares one on top of each other and build up some mark making and some different weights of my pencil line so basically i press harder on some of them and press lighter on others i then move on to my c's different directions and sizes and then after that i work on circles and ellipses [Music] again i'm using different directions when i'm drawing my circles and ellipses and i'm just starting to think about them as 3d shapes as well i'm now moving on to my s-shapes varying sizes and the directions all over the page engaging my wrist and my shoulder moving my whole arm as i'm doing them all over the page s-shapes are really useful if you want to sit down and do a life drawing practice [Music] now moving on to spheres and 3d shapes so i'm drawing the axes and then inner ellipses into my spheres to give a more 3d effect i'm doing lots of lines here to find the form and moving my wrist in lots of different directions and quite quickly as well so even though i've sped up this footage i am going quite quickly here i'm beginning to really warm up now it's starting to improve my drawing already [Music] so by going over the lines over and over again i'm also beginning to add a shading practice into it so i'm thinking about where the light would hit etc and although i'm not shading it in i'm actually doing some mark making that i would use when i'm doing some tonal values and shading so the idea here is to make it feel so familiar that you can do it without thinking and just keep repeating different sizes different 3d shapes all over your page until your page is full try not to think too much and don't worry about getting things right or wrong at this stage just enjoy the feel of the pencil on the paper and the familiarity of the mark making that you are doing so now i'm starting to shade [Music] just coloring different parts of the 3d shapes of where the light might be hitting and adding shadows here and there as well and by this point i'm really noticing that these warm-up activities are really starting to kick in and i am actually feeling much more confident with my pencil use which is after all the whole point of doing them just make a mental note of when that kicks in for you how many minutes you've been going so i love to doodle and i tend to doodle organic shapes butterflies and flowers and things like that it really doesn't matter what you prefer to doodle as long as you're moving your wrist in lots of different directions i like to try and keep my pad in the same position so that it's my wrist and arm and shoulder that's doing the work and i don't make it easier for myself by switching my notepad into different directions and i just like to fill my page with a repeated doodle and as i continue with this it starts to feel easier and easier and more comfortable even in the directions for my wrist that it didn't perhaps feel that comfortable to begin with [Music] the unfamiliar directions become much much easier the more you keep going and i just fill my page filling in the gaps varying the size of my doodle so i end up with a page of pattern you could color these in afterwards as well it's quite a fun thing to do [Music] in fact colouring on its own is a really fun thing to do and it warms you up so you could do that without even thinking because you don't even have to worry about what you're drawing you can just literally be colouring in so i'm really starting to vary my line work now to try and create some 3d lust to the flower do also varying the size of the petals as i get to the outer layers of the flower as well to make it look a little bit realistic again i'm not too bothered about what it's going to look like i'm just practicing different shapes different sizes different line weights different directions without thinking too much about what i'm doing [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] and i'm just flicking through my sketchbook here to share a couple of my examples of drawings that i do these ones are from imagination so i don't have any source material i just warm up and practice tonal values and positions of features of the face and things like that and just work from imagination to create different characters and expressions once i've warmed up i might move on to a 20 minute half an hour sketch like this one here so for this sketch i was using hatching and cross hatching really large strokes and just trying to get the facial features right and most of the tonal values mapped out correctly as well but it wasn't a longer study the time lapse of that drawing is actually at the end of this video if you'd like to see so i'm just having a flick through my other journal to show some other examples as well i just like to work with different characters and expressions different size of faces and again these are all from my imagination i'm not using source material for these kind of drawings but i do like to warm up before starting them and then often i go back into my journal and create some more colorful art journal pages from my sketches and use them as a starting point so things like this where i've added in some color some more details and some text as well i like to add text into my pages and my paintings and sometimes i grab some simple source material like i did for that fairy where i just wanted to work out a little composition for a painting i was doing that drawing there was it was from imagination but i wanted a little bit more realism to it so i spent quite a long time with that one i often end up with reoccurring characters as well that come back time and time and again and i like to mix up my drawings as well so sometimes i find myself drawing these little characters as well my midway point is a sort of realistic quick sketch like that one and then i move on to the observational drawings where i use a source material and i really try and map out the features and the tonal values correctly and i work really hard at those for a number of hours to really try and get um some improvements to my drawings hopefully anyway and obviously the more that you practice the more improvements you will see which then spurs you on to practicing more hopefully i often go back in and maybe pick a feature of the face so for example on this page i picked noses i was having some trouble with some noses that day and so i thought i'll do some a few little studies of noses at different angles and that's a really useful way to improve different features for example things that you're having trouble with don't be scared to sort of break off from the main drawing and dip into your sketchbooks and just have a little quick practice at something so before i go i'll just leave you with a few other ideas that you could try i like to practice speed drawing studies so for example do a study for one minute two minutes or five minutes and really challenge yourself to get as much that drawing down on that sketch another idea is to draw blind so draw with your eyes closed that's quite an interesting one to try i've mentioned colouring books but that's a really good way to just really relax and not have to think about it but get that hand and wrist and shoulder moving and creativity with colours and things like that try doing a drawing with your non-dominant hand that's a really interesting practice as well try drawings where you don't take the pen or pencil off the page so you do scribble drawings and you have to kind of do extra lines to get your pencil in the right position of where you want it to be another thing i like to do which i've talked about as well is varying the pressure to play with different line weights and that's a really fun way of creating a kind of 3dness to your drawings without having to do any shading i also like to color 2 and 3d shapes with different kinds of shading so you can try hatching cross hatching coloring in dots lots of different kinds of shading to try to create lots of different tonal values so just a couple of final pointers i do recommend you make it as easy for yourself to fit into your day as possible you can do this while watching a film or on tv or talking on the phone is a good one or waiting for something to cook try to find a regular slot in your day so it becomes a routine so just remember as well they were all unique and what works for me might not necessarily work for you to find out what works best for you just practice regularly and repeat the exercises that you enjoy the most you'll soon discover what and how long you need to practice for to get optimum results [Music] if you have any questions or comments just leave them down below and if you enjoyed the video don't forget to like and subscribe so thanks so much for watching lots of love and virtual hugs bye for now and i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: The Unexpected Gypsy

Views: 47,984

Rating: 4.9687595 out of 5

Keywords: mixed media art, mixed media art journal tutorials, new youtubers, new youtubers channels, new youtuber tag, newyoutuber, brandnewchannel, arttherapy, lockdownart, lockdowntimes, new youtubers 2020, art journaling, art journal, moleskine sketchbook, studio vlog, lockdown vlog, studio day, new vlogger, how to draw, learn to draw, how to get back into drawing, how to start drawing, drawing exercises, drawing tutorial for beginners, drawing tips, guide to drawing faces, art tips

Id: mzh1MVfzCys

Length: 18min 42sec (1122 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2020