7. Exercise - Doodling
Use as: can be both, but more suited as an exercise
Purposes: - increasing focus and endurance - learning to draw details - helps learning to draw texture (which will be very important later on)
How to: There are basically two steps that need to be repeated:
prepare a template page full of boxes
fill out each box with different forms, patterns, shapes or little drawings
Tips: - the overhand grip will not work in this case (I believe this at least) stick to the tripod grip - do the lines in both directions; you will need to be able to do this later! (you can actually see that I make more mistakes in the counterclockwise direction) - you are not drawing a beautiful picture, so don’t focus on perfect forms, focus on fluent strokes, but try to keep the patterns in the same size and form as possible - relax!
My humble experience so far: I’m bad at this. I get bored too fast and reall don’t like drawing little details. So basically this is a perfect workout for me! I could imagine this to be a great exercise for many. This does indeep help you focus and endurance, which are both very important if you want to draw good texture (e.g. skin, fur, gras, leaves on a tree…) later.
With digital drawing tools, this might not be too important, but as soon as you take a pencil and try to draw a picture with a grassfield on half of the canvas you’ll know what I mean.
I also believe that if you get better in doodling you will also be able to draw faces better, as they tend to have a lots of fine lines wich make the difference between recognizable faces or weird 3-year-old-face-drawing.
Conclusion: A workout for everyone - can work as a warm-up as well, but I’m not relaxed enough for such a tourture ;)
