Creative Hack #2: Warm up

Today I write for the visual artists out there. How many times have you been super keen to sit down to work on your project only to become disheartened at how wrong it all seems to turn out? It just doesn’t flow and you end up with a mess. I’ve encountered this so many times. Yesterday I tried drawing a frog in colour pencil. I was working off a front-on reference picture which was tricky, and it turned out more like a camouflaged puddle with eyes. If you’ve had this experience – and I know you have! – it’s possible the reason for your failure was that you didn’t warm up.

In the performing arts, it’s common practice to warm up. Singers warm up their voices, musicians warm up their hands and instruments, actors will warm up their whole bodies in preparation to perform. But as visual artists, I think this step of the process is often overlooked. The purpose of a warm up is to ease you in, loosen you up and relax you for the main event. If we sit down and plow straight into our artwork it is likely it will look and feel tense. This comes out as mistakes or overly tight strokes lacking in emotion. If you can relate to this at all then I suggest you take some time to warm up.

Our school has recently implemented a new instructional model for teaching that includes ‘starter activities’ at the beginning of every lesson. These starters are used to hook kids in, settle them into learning and set the scene for the lesson. I must admit that although I did this sometimes, it was not part of my daily teaching practice until this year. Now that I use starters every lesson, I find kids more willing to participate in the main learning activity. Perhaps this is because they’ve had a quick, fun intro to break the ice and get the creative juices flowing.

During Inktober my warm up would be a page of scrawly sketches to brainstorm my prompts. Other times I’ve started with a small observational drawing. A warm up can be anything you like, just as long as there is no pressure on what you create. This is not about creating a product you can put on Instagram. Think process not product.

Here’s 3 warm-ups I’ve tried lately.

1) Watercolour circles.

This idea came from Margarita Bourkova’s Skillshare class “Art Hack’s to Overcome Creative Block: The Power of Series”. When she’s at a loss for ideas she paints a series of coloured circles with watercolours. This is so simple and fun to do. Who doesn’t like watching watercolours bleed into each other? Then, on another day, she will draw over them in pen. Here’s a few I did.

You can see I eased into it and became more creative as I went along. I mean, I started with a cookie! Then I started to see faces. Another day I did a series of flowers. I like this because it’s two warm-ups in one. One warm up sets the stage for another warm up so you don’t have to think of something to do next time you have creative block.

2)  Continuous line drawing.

I’ve been following Angus Martin on Instagram recently and have tried a few continuous line portraits. Continuous line drawing is a staple in my classroom as it always leads to looser and more expressive drawings. All you have to do is draw without taking your pen off the paper. Try drawing a portrait in one or two continuous lines.

3) Scribble

Why not just scribble? Just get all the tension and ugliness out on the page at once. Do it fast, don’t think and just draw. Let the page be a place to empty out. No-one has to see it, unless you're writing about it in your blog! This one is definitely not about producing anything, but it is still valuable because of what it leads to – a more relaxed state.

That’s all from me. Give it a go! If you have a warm-up activity that works for you, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Until next time,

Erin