5 Tips to Start a Daily Drawing Practice

Written By Stephanie Broder

I draw every single day, or as close to it as you can get, while allowing for the chaos of life. Many people assume this is a hard habit to make or keep. But for me, drawing every day is as natural as eating every day.

Maybe it is a hard habit to start, but I promise you that once you get in the flow of it, you’ll be able to maintain your own daily drawing practice in no time! Here are some tips to get you started.

Have the Tools at Hand

I’ve written before about how my iPad Pro + Apple Pencil + Procreate were game-changers for me. Suddenly, I could carry the primary tool of my art everywhere I went. I draw at cafes, in waiting rooms, on the bus, during breaks at work, at social events… everywhere! Having tools for making art quickly at hand makes constant creation more natural and convenient. And even if you are a primary digital artist like me, that doesn’t mean you only need an iPad.

Scattered around my house are sketchbooks in various sizes for various bags, a ready-to-grab pencil case with my basics, and enough pencil sharpeners that one is always in sight. Whatever I feel like making, it’s not hard or time-consuming to gather or pack up my supplies and start working. For planned creation sessions, some tools can be put away in cupboards and closets. But others must be ready to go and where you can see ‘em.

My quick picks for a drawing session - nothing fancy! 

Incorporate Warm-up Exercises

When you first start a daily drawing exercise, you may find the spectre of the blank page is too daunting to overcome. If you’ve ever opened your sketchbook or app to a fresh page and immediately drawn a blank, try incorporating a rotating selection of warm-up exercises to get you going! My favourites include:

Whether you wind up only doing exercises or going on to other types of drawing, you’ve still drawn for the day! These types of exercises are also important for building skills and general practice, even if they don’t lead to original output during that same session.

Curate Your Space for Creation

What inspires you?

If looking at the work of other artists always makes you want to create, buy their artbooks to have on hand or prints to decorate your walls.

If museums and galleries inspire you, bring a slice home with books detailing their collections, postcards or magnets from their gift shop.

Or maybe having a variety of tools to play with inspires you. Fill a box or shelf with a fun mix of inks, brushes, paints, collage material, paper scraps, crayons or other eclectic tools.

The point is to surround yourself with things that inspire you to create. My bookshelves are full of comics and artbooks, and my TV is surrounded by bookshelves, so I can only sit there for so long binging TV shows before I grab one off the shelves, start flipping through it, become immersed and inspired, and start making my own work. What’s your perfect inspiration space?

Surrounded in inspiration, always

Start Every Day Fresh

Forgetting to draw one day or being too busy to do so is never the end of the world or the end of your creative practice. And, in my experience, trying to “make up for” a missed day by going extra hard the next day doesn’t help. The point of drawing every day is to make it feel natural and effortless. Something you automatically incorporate into your day. You might feel a bit down when you miss a day; I know I do! But it should be because you love it so much that you want more time for it, not out of guilt. Sometimes we need a break, or sometimes a break finds us! Just start the next day with the intention to work in some drawing time and leave the past behind.

Allow for Other Creative Activities

When I can't draw for any reason—stress, illness, distraction—I still have creative activities I love all around me. Keeping my hands moving and my creative juices flowing feeds into the daily habit. I usually have an easy knitting project kicking around. It’s a brain-empty activity that still lets me create. Origami was also a past favourite of mine! And I wasn’t out there learning cool patterns. I folded paper cranes again and again, just enjoying the process of making something beautiful with my hands.

In our screen-focused, email-centric, Zoom-meeting world, spending time creating something with your hands is well spent and worth celebrating. Enjoy it, and it will find you each day!

Stephanie Broder
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