Collected useful digital drawing exercises with tips from Skills Up School’s art director, Elizaveta Parfenova.

Line sketches from life

Take some simple objects (a box, a hardcover book, a mug, a pencil case, a fruit, anything you can think of) and arrange them
on the plane of the table. The design and structure of the facility should be simple and
is understandable.

Task: to make several line sketches based on nature.
Try to capture proportional relationships and foreshortening, taking into account the basic design features of each object. It should not take more than 15 minutes per sketch.

Speedpoint from nature

Choose one object composed of one or more materials that has a simple three-dimensional geometry at its base: a ball, cube, or cylinder. Expose the directional lighting with any lamp to determine the light shade.

Task: Based on the nature, make a painting study with minimal elaboration of the environment, taking into account the properties of the material, own color of the object and light shade. It should not take more than 40 minutes per speedpoint.

Color transposition from paintings

Choose several paintings of landscapes or studies by your favorite artist (6-9 paintings). Based on these references, perform the transfers using a limited color palette (5-8 shades) and a stiff brush/lasso tool. These sketches should convey as accurately as possible the main compositional spots, the general scale and mood of the painting. The exercise is aimed at developing skills of seeing the “whole”, generalizing, studying compositional interrelationships. A single transposition should not take more than 20 minutes.