Wednesday WarmUp Doodle Ellipse

Wednesday WarmUp 1: Doodle Ellipse

Welcome!

For at least the next seven weeks, this blog will host “Wednesday Warm Up,”— a day of usually quick drawing, inking, brushing as warm up to our serious art. I’ll share a strategy to try each Wednesday using the iPad app ProCreate. I will only use the brushes in the app— there are so many I haven’t tried that warming up with a new brush will be an added bonus and challenge.

I hope you enjoy this one that I call Ellipse Fills Warm Up. It’s one I had adapted to my iPad as way to get my hand flowing– my old hands tend to shake a bit, so a “just for fun” practice session helps me warm up the muscle memory and reset my focus for the project at hand. I got the idea from a book a friend of mine gave me a couple years ago when I started drawing. It’s called Craft-a-Doodle 75 Creative Exercises from 18 Artists by Jenny Doh. So I hope you enjoy the practice– I’m sure you’ll surpass mine, since, I am still such a beginner.

Goal: warm up the muscle memory for drawing; freehand strokes and ellipse practice; quick design decisions; fun shapes and creatures

TIP: To easily create perfect shapes, follow the QuickShape directions in the ProCreate Handbook. Summary: Draw the shape but keep the finger or pencil held at the closing point– it will snap to the shape. But check out the handbook– there’s a lot you can do with this ProCreate technique.

The Process I Use:

Choose two brushes, one thick and one thin. I chose outline and Derwent from the Sketching category of brushes.
Fill the canvas with ellipses— circles and ovals, freehand and with app support to create perfect ones, a variety of both.
Choose two freehand fill styles. I chose loops and spirals.
Fill the ellipses with your two styles.
I just created random designs at first, then a few spaces, and an owl appeared. Why I didn’t draw a fish? I don’t know.
Add background color or fill in as an option.

Share your examples and adaptations so we can learn from each other.

Samples:

Example 1
Sketching Brushes Outline and Derwent
Style: loops and spirals

Example 2
Procreate brushes Monoline and Turp and Paint
Style: waves and spirals

Here’s one I tried to organize a bit while drawing quickly.

I was going to add a background, but the app began to mess up due to the updating of my iOS operating system– I’m thinking the app will catch up shortly.