Tutored Life Drawing Blog Week 13: Keep Drawing Over the Holidays (Patreon)

The Christmas period may make it difficult to get extended periods of time to draw. Between preparing for the holidays and busy home environments, it is easy to miss out on drawing and get a bit rusty.

This week's lesson is about finding creative ways to keep drawing over the holidays with a bumper-pack of exercises to dip into. Remember that any kind of drawing can help exercise this skill set. It is also a chance to try something new without the pressure of results.

Above: 'Tilli' – sketch taken from last year's Christmas Life Drawing class.

Keep Drawing Around the Holidays

These exercises make the most of busy spaces and holiday activities. Consider keeping a small sketchbook and pencil to hand in order to keep drawing, even if this results in many short sketches.

Exercise 1: Lightning Sketches

Very quick sketches are often seen as a challenge, as it is more usual to sit down and do a considered study. However, this is a great way to catch an impression of a subject, and keep things loose and expressive.

In this exercise, draw your subject as quickly as possible. Try to get everything down; for instance, if sketching someone's portrait, ensure that includes all visible features, any hair and possibly the neck and shoulders. Portraiture is a good subject for this exercise, especially if potential sitters aren't prepared to stay still, but any subject works.

Consider what makes the subject - a portrait cannot be made of a single well-defined eye, but a few dots and dashes for the features with some contour lines for the hair and face may do a better job.

The likeness of a subject is often captured very early in a drawing, in the shapes, gesture, line quality and flow of the contours. A drawing need not be observationally accurate to have a good likeness – think about how caricature pushes this idea to the extreme!

A couple of pages of spontaneous sketches. This is a good exercise for drawing moving targets like pets, as well as something that can be done with objects to loosen up. Man-made objects tend to be a good challenge for drawing proportions.

Exercise 2: Drawing from Films

Watching a film together is a common holiday activity. Films are a good drawing subject as they offer many examples of compositions to play with, and subject matter that might not be encountered in daily life.

They also are constantly moving, requiring more quick sketching. For this is exercise, I recommend against pausing, even if that is a possibility. Keep your drawings quick and spontaneous, and rely on memory to try and fill in any gaps.

Compositional sketches are quick sketches of the layout of the whole screen. This could be done as a quick line drawing to record how major elements are arranged, or possibly done with a thicker pen to record major tonal shapes. Films are a great lesson in composition, and offer a lot of ideas our own work. A well-made film plans the composition carefully in every frame to tell the story with the greatest impact and clarity.

It is also good to do more general quick sketches from films. Treat this a like the first exercise; try to capture as much information as you can in the quickest sketch possible, as the film won't stop rolling!

Fast compositional sketches focusing on scene layouts.

Exercise 3: Drawing Changing Spaces

One feature of the holidays is that spaces are often changing. This might be for Christmas decorations, or the presence of different people in the home.

In this exercise, find an interior or exterior space that undergoes some kind of change over the holidays. Do a continuous line drawing of it in one state, by picking a point in the scene to start from, and exploring the contours. Look at the subject most of the time, and only glance down at your drawing to check that the contour line hasn't gone too far astray. In particular, make sure that any static parts of the scene like walls, doors and heavy furniture are caught in the drawing.

Wait until the space changes significantly for the next step. For instance, the addition of decorations, or new people in the space. Return to the place where you made the first drawing. On top of this, start a second contour drawing that is positioned in the same place on the page. Use the static features of the scene to help with this. It may help to partially erase the first drawing before doing the second, or drawing using a different colour pen or pencil.

The first layer of this drawing was done in red, before the Christmas tree went up. Then the second layer in green is added.

Experimental Materials

These exercises make use of unconventional tools that might be available, and offer possible ways to experiment with them.

Exercise 4: Drawing with Found Paper Shapes

This exercise interrupts a usual drawing progress, and there are different ways to approach it. It can also be combined with life drawing. For this, you will need some kind of found paper – magazines, wrapping paper, or anything to hand – and a glue stick in addition to your usual drawing tools.

Tear up some shapes from the paper. Try to keep the shape relatively simple – avoid complex 'starburst' type shapes – and consider the size of the shape relative to your drawing size. Glue the shapes onto the page before deciding on your subject.

The collage shape didn't match the shape of the figure, but the angles of the corners helped push the tilt of the ribcage, and the collage piece itself adds weight to the upper torso.

When drawing on these shapes, use them as an anchor for the subject. They may roughly match part of the subject, its angles, negative shapes or spacing. The chief reason behind using these is to create something to interact with on the page, and interrupt the drawing process. This can be a useful exercise for loosening up, as it encourages looking for different visual relationships. It is also a great way to get past the fear of a blank page!

Multiple collage shapes can be used in a drawing.

Exercise 5: 'Painting' with Collage

Paper catalogues and magazines often appear around Christmas, so try picking a couple up for making collages. There are many different approaches to collage, such as combining it with drawing, creating cut-outs, photocollage and in this case, mosaic.

In this exercise, pick any subject to 'draw' with collage. Tear out swatches of colour to match a colour shape on the subject and tile them together. Colours in print typically do not match the tonal values and saturations of colours viewed in real life, so this is going to require approximation and comparison. Print tends to have a restrictive tonal range.

Typically, I would start by finding a big general 'base' colour that is close to the average of the subject, and work down to progressively smaller shapes.

The first stage shows the collage blocked in with large, approximate shapes. The second shows more focus on smaller areas of colour as features and details are resolved. It is fine to layer up these paper swatches.

Allow more time for this exercise. Depending on the subject, it could take half an hour or longer. Whilst this is a fun, playful exercise, I personally find it helps with exercising certain thought processes behind painting, particularly drawing with shape, using colour contrast, and the process of resolving a subject.

Try to avoid matching the collage subject to the real one – such as by finding skin tones in photos of people. Instead look for other things that could fit in.

Exercise 6: Drawing in Felt Pen

Felt pens are not a traditional drawing medium, and cheap ones typically do not have naturalistic colours. A common children's gift at Christmas, these are easy to get hold of, and can be fun to use with their limitations. I recommend using cheaper, low quality pens for this – it adds an extra challenge!

Again, this can be done with any subject. Often subjects that have varied colours are a bit easier to deal with. Pens do not match the colours observed in reality, so like the previous collage exercise, we may need to make approximations and contrasts. If colour is an intimidating prospect, ignore this, and focus on fundamental drawing ideas instead – such as contour and negative space.

These two portraits show quick and longer efforts, but neither accurately portray colour.

It might help to use a lighter pen – such as yellow or a light grey – to sketch out the broad shape and structure of the subject first. Then start to create areas of colour by hatching them together. Try to focus on shapes, and don't worry if the colours are accurate.

This is a good exercise for beginning to think about how colours interact relative to each other – a rather complex area.

A pen sketch of a primula.

Group Drawing Games

These activities are for multiple people, and like the previous ones, can be done by beginners and more experienced artists alike.

Exercise 7: Portrait Club

Portrait club is a staple of group drawing exercises. Over lock down, it has successfully transferred to video calls, so this is a great exercise for a socially-distant Christmas.

In portrait club, everyone takes turns sitting still whilst the rest of the group draws their portrait. Decide together how long the drawing time should be; typically this is ten minutes but chose whatever works best for the group! Sometimes a seat is assigned to the sitter, especially if there is good lighting, or if the whole group has a good view of the same place; otherwise, it is fine to form a circle and work around the group. Usually, especially in a larger group, the current sitter gets to decide the next sitter.

At its simplest, all portrait club needs is some pencils and paper, a few chairs, some bodies to fill them, and a timer. If you want to mix things up and get more elaborate, consider the following:

How are you sitting?

What direction are you looking in?

Are there any props or costume items – such as hats – that could be used?

How is the light position? If there is a lamp lighting you, can it be moved to create interesting effects?

Props needn't be fancy, as even plants can help add a little extra something!

Don't be afraid to keep things simple however. This is a great group activity that anyone who would like to draw can take part in, and is a great way to get some free sitters to draw!

Consider drawing the setting as well – especially in video calls, when everyone will have a different background.

Exercise 8: Collaborative Drawing

For this exercise, you will need a reasonably large sheet of paper, though it is fine to use packing paper, newspaper, or other found papers if you lack large sizes. Use any drawing materials, indeed, it could be a good idea to keep a few different materials to hand.

This can be done with two or more people. For larger groups, pair up. Place the paper either at an easel or a flat table, with each person either side. Consider pairing up left and right handers where possible. For a larger group, set pairs up around the subject that you are all drawing.

Very quick sketch of paired artists doing collaborative drawings on easels in a life class.

The goal of this game is to create a single drawing of the same subject together. This seems straightforward, but you are working with another person who may make very different decisions. Don't be afraid to draw on top of the other person's work, and allow both people to cover the entire drawing, rather than doing a side each. If you both have different materials, there might be an effective way to layer them.

Any subject can be drawn; a life drawing on a screen, an interior scene or any kind of still life item. If there is an odd number of people, consider switching partners around and letting the spare person be a portrait sitter.

Set a timer for each new drawing. Ten minutes is a good length of time, but do change that if it feels too long or too short – some subjects take longer to draw than others.

Collaborative drawing of Till from last year's Christmas session, by Draw regulars Alex and Yuki – thank you for letting me use this. Don't be afraid to add imaginative elements to these drawing!

Key Take-Aways:

• Try to keep drawing over the holidays – any kind of drawing counts, even if it is lots of little sketches.
• Be open to experimenting in this period; it might be hard to make time for sustained projects so this is a good time to try something different.
• Keep a sketchbook handy!

Recommended Materials: Anything to hand; pens, pencils, collage papers and glue.

Further Reading:  If you have time, considering dipping into our previous lessons on the Draw Brighton Navigator. 

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Further links

>> Watch the Week 13: Christmas Special main lesson HERE (All Tiers)  
>> Watch the Week 13: Christmas Special demo HERE (All Tiers)

Find links to the whole Tutored Life Drawing Course HERE