Drawing Lab: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun

Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun (Lab Series)

I picked up an interesting book this weekend (hooray for trade credit). I've been drawing a lot lately, for fun and with the intention to hone my skills and maybe open new avenues for my career (I actually have a career! That is so exciting!).

The book is basically a series of assignments/exercises to create some structure and direction for the practice and creation of art. Why invite structure for creative activity? Pythagoras said "Limit gives form to the limitless." Even the most creative of games have some rules; even playground games of makebelieve involve making up some rules to follow.

The first exercise I took on was 34: Numbers Game. There's a list of animals and a list of objects. Without looking at the lists, you pick two numbers at random. Then see what you've chosen from the list. After that, you come up with some ideas for the drawing, choose the most interesting, and draw it.

My two picks turned out to be "bird" and "bathtub."

So much fun!