7 Day Drawing & Sketching Challenge

7-Day DRAWING & SKETCHING CHAllENGE this week-long challenge is designed to improve your drawing skills by pushing you out of your comfort zone. You’ll be tackling a variety of subject matter along with some sketching exercises. You can take the challenge over seven consecutive days or one to two days apart (but no more than that or you’ll lose valuable momentum!). ready? Let’s go...

DAY 1 Draw a lamp or a pot or kettle. Add some basic shading to create form but focus on getting the shape right first. Spend no more than 20 minutes on this and use either a charcoal pencil or a very soft graphite pencil (8 or 9B) to speed up the shading process. Here are some photos to chose from:

PHOTO 1 PHOTO 2 PHOTO 3 PHOTO 4

DAY 2 Draw a facial feature study or two - an eye and a mouth for example. when you download an image from Pixabay or unsplash, download the highest resolution (you need to sign up for an account at Pixabay to do this, but it’s free). the high res version allows you to zoom in on the feature and still see enough detail to sketch from. Here’s a couple of photos you could use: A great tip for drawing anything with intricate curves (such as an eye) is to break those curves down into straight lines. take a look at my short blog post on drawing an eye like this before you start.

PORTRAIT 1 PORTRAIT 2 PORTRAIT 3 (young man) (young woman) (older man)

DAY 3 Draw an animal using basic shapes. watch my video lesson first, then choose a photo below:

ANIMAL 1 ANIMAL 2 ANIMAL 3

(elephant) (flamingo) (giraffe)

DAY 4 Draw the peas in a pod or broccoli photo but really spend some time on shading to recreate some nice form. give yourself an hour if possible. Quick tip: make the photos black and white to help see the values more easily.

DAY 5 Draw a figure focusing on proportion and shape rather than shading and detail. Here are three I recommend choosing from:

EASY MODERATE DIFFICULT

(female’s back) (woman at cafe) (ballerina)

DAY 6 choose an item from the ‘Around Your House’ list and sketch it. If you’re having trouble choosing, go for the bunch of keys and ideally sketch them from life with a table light lighting from one side (to create some nice strong shadows).

DAY 7 Draw a simple building, landscape or still life three times. For the first attempt give yourself a maxim of 15 minutes. For the second attempt give yourself a maximum of 12 minutes. And for the third attempt, a maximum of 10 minutes. Have a visible stop watch (your phone will almost certainly have a built in app) that you can check on as you sketch. choose one these references or one of your own:

EASY MODERATE DIFFICULT (wooden door) (old boat) (reclining figure)