When you hit the gym or go for a run, you probably do something easy first to warm-up your muscles. Warming up prevents injury by priming muscles, getting your blood flowing, and boosting your confidence before a grueling workout. Doing warm-up exercises isn't just for athletics though. Warming up can be a great way to prepare your mind and hands before you tackle a bigger project. It's a low stakes way to loosen up your gestures while also nudging your brain to get into creative mode.
Once you've warmed up, you'll be needing your next project. My Modern Met Academy courses are great for building up your skills and confidence when you're feeling overwhelmed by a blank canvas or page. One great class for both beginners and seasoned artists is Nitika Ale's Learn How to Paint Abstract Acrylic Floral Paintings. Ale encourages her students to become more confident in their work, focusing on color-mixing and loosening up brushstrokes.
Scroll down to check out five ways you can warm up to create your next masterpiece.
Before you start your next art project, here are five activities to get you in the right frame of mind:
1. Blind Contour Drawing
Photo: M. Gunn, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Without looking at the surface you're drawing on, use your chosen medium to sketch something in front of you. Bonus points if you don't lift your hand from the page. This is especially great for practicing drawing oh-so-difficult hands and feet. Blind contour drawing lets you shed any perfectionist tendencies and focus purely on observation and moving your hand in unison.
2. Sketching a Dozen Patterned Circles
Photo: maritime_m/Depositphotos
Fill up a page in your sketchbook with 12 circles. Then draw a new pattern inside each circle. By playing with patterns, you'll get your creative juices flowing and feel more playful with how you make marks on the page.
3. Shading and Color-Mixing
If you are drawing, use your pencil to create a gradient across the top of your page. Start with the lightest pressure and slowly increase until you are making the darkest value possible. Then keep doing this, but instead of just up and down vertical lines, use points to create a pointillist gradient, then continue with cross-hatching. If you are a painter, gradients can help you become an expert in color-mixing.
Start with the pure hue of your paint and slowly mix in more white paint for it to become lighter, or black paint to become darker. Or start with one hue on one end and slowly blend in a new color to create a totally new color.
4. Doodling
Quickly make a large random doodle on paper. Once again, don't look at the page while you doodle. Then take what you drew and turn the doodle into something more representational, like an animal. This again gets you to look at something in a new way.
5. Thumbnail Warm-ups
Draw two to four squares on your page. Then draw a thumbnail sketch or paint a thumbnail painting of a composition you're interested in doing in larger scale. Next, use the remaining thumbnails to alter your original idea. Should an object be larger in the frame? Or would it help to add more contrast to your shades? This not only helps you warm up, but lets you refine your plans for your next work of art. Artist Nitika Ale demonstrates this exercise with acrylic paint in her e-course, Learn How to Paint Abstract Acrylic Floral Paintings.
Enroll now in Learn How to Paint Abstract Acrylic Floral Paintings or one of My Modern Met Academy's other painting and illustration classes to guide you as you develop your artistic eye and create muscle memory in how to translate your vision to the page or canvas.
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