3 of my favourite creative warm ups

Spending time just with my pencil and a piece of paper has become my refuge between endless video calls and screen time. I’ve written about how taking physical notes has been such a boon to my mental health recently. 

I recently hosted a short workshop based and drawing to stay afloat. Well, it was billed as creative warm ups, and it was that too, but really it was me sharing how I cope. It was such a lovely session and a chance to spend time doing something that wasn’t just another meeting. There’s nothing I enjoy more than getting people drawing and sharing the endorphin rush that comes from putting pencil to paper.

I shared three drawing exercises I love and I thought would be a fun lunch time break. They’re all exercises you can do on your own or together with others. You can use them to warm up for your day, to get you feeling good before tackling a creative challenge, as a silly ice breaker before a workshop, or whenever and however you want. 

Here are the exercises along with a little description of each and why I love them. You only need something to draw on and something to draw with, no specific supplies or skills required.

The circles game

This one is incredibly simple and has only 2 stages:

1. Draw a set number of round shapes. We did 12 on the day, but you can do as many as time will allow. I say round shapes not circles because drawing the perfect sphere is terrifying.
2. Every 30 seconds turn a “circle” into a recognisable object.

That’s it. It’s the HIIT workout of drawing exercises and it’s all about coming up with lots of ideas and feeling confident making marks. You can add extra challenges by setting a theme for the images or add extra discussion by spending time pulling out what themes are shared between different people. 

Drawing improv

I named this one, but I’m sure other people have been doing it for years. You take a random prompt and then you have to incorporate another random prompt and then another and then another, until you’ve created a whole world. It leads to some weird and wonderful worlds. On the day I led the random word selection, but there are lots of ways you can make it more interactive if you have time – I can’t wait to be reunited with my lego head raffle box! This is a great exercise for embracing silliness, telling stories and getting people to feel open to compromise and change.

Blind contour drawing

There’s already so much great writing out there about the power of blind contour drawing, but I had to include it here because it’s my favourite. The principle is that you look at your subject, not at your page, and you use a single line to trace it or them. The idea is that you imagine your pen touching the outlines of what you’re looking at. It’s a really nice one to feel connected in weirdly digital times and it always leads to some strange looking images. But those images come from a different kind of sight and I feel like they capture something true if not recognisable. 

I really enjoy hosting drawing workshops, whether they’re about drawing for mental health, to connect or to communicate better, so if that’s something you’re interested in do get in touch!

Natalie