Drawing exercise made fun

Drawing ellipses is a very good drawing exercise, but can also become very boring. What I try to do to lighten up the exercise is making a subject out of the ellipses. For instance: donuts. They come in a very basic form, are therefore easy subjects, they can be bought mostly everywhere and, last but not least, after finishing your exercise you can eat your drawing model! Is there any other hobby with such an advantage?

Drawing exercise

It's a long time ago since I posted a drawing exercise I made using the great book 'Capturing texture' by Michael Warr. It's become my standard studybook the last few years. It's very inspirational and challenging. Not every result of an exercise is suitable to post on this blog, but this one I couldn't resist. It's a stippling exercise in pencil. The subject, bread, is very suitable for this technique because of the structure of bread. Apart from that, I'm the son of a baker, so this subject is something I grew up with.
2B pencil on white drawing paper, 24 x 16 cm.

Adding some colour

Just for the fun I added some colour to the pencildrawing of yesterdays post. I was curious to see what happens. I think it's not an improvement, to be honest.

Drawing exercise

This month's drawing exercise was to draw a paprika in black and white, with a 2B pencil. Only the outside of the paprika would be too simple, so it had to be cut in two pieces. Luckily enough only one piece had to be drawn, which proved to be difficult enough I must admit. The light and colours had to be captured in halftones. Something I always find challenging.

Drawing exercise

"Once upon a time ago" I tried to make a living by drawing. But things went a little different as planned and I had to change course. For years I didn't draw at all, but recently I took up the old pencils and digged up the old sketchbooks. I also bought a teaching book "Capturing Texture by Michael Warr" which I can recommend to anyone who loves drawing and painting.
I wanted to use the book to pick up my old drawing pace, but luckely enough I must say that there's so much coming to me that I hardly find time to work out every idea that's coming up. Of course the internet is nowadays a big source of ideas and drawing techniques. But I must say that an old-fashioned book can be inspiring as well. Not to ignore the fact that pictures look better in print than on the screen of your computer.
The exercise above was about drawing a piece of white paper on a white background with only an HB pencil to be used.