Drawing Lines

You may not realise it yet, but the more you draw lines, the more confident you can become . I started practicing drawing lines a few months ago and I can already see the improvements I have made, and where I have benefited from repeatedly drawing them.

• Improved hand and motion control : Drawing lines has helped me become more confident in my art. The more I drew lines, whether they were straight or curled, the steadier my hand became.

• Better line quality : No more wobbly lines, cleaner curved lines, and straight lines were longer overall with an acute sense of being a lot less hesitant.

• I developed a particular sensitivity to pressure which is particularly important for those working with colouring pencils like myself (I believe it helps build up skills in precise pressure control and smooth layering of colours). I was also much more aware of the paper texture i was using (which led me down the rabbit hole of which paper i like best and which i don’t but that’s a post for another time).

• It improved my observation skills (I started to notice things like the spacing between the lines, the rhythm of my hand, the parallelism and the very slight curves I made. My lines always started to either rise or dip at the end of the movement. It takes a lot of practice to make long straight lines really straight without the use of a ruler.

• It created a calming, mindfulness exercise that regulated my nervous system . I always started with this exercise before starting to actually draw something. It helped settle my mind, reduced my fear of the blank page somehow and made it easier to just draw once I had finished my lines. The goal here was to make my hand move and not to make art ( although some people might call this art too).

I can honestly recommend the practice. Look to practice 5 minutes a day. After a few weeks compare your work from day 1 to day 30 for example and see if you can spot the differences. Simple and fun!