Line drawing exercises are essential practice to train your hand for digital art on a tablet – or so I'm told. Here at Creative Bloq, we regularly publish expert tutorials from acclaimed professional artists with years of experience. I am not one of them.
I've worked in media and brand design, but I've never been able to draw and haven't tried to since I was a kid. So Creative Bloq thought I'd be the perfect candidate to try to learn to draw and write about the experience (thanks, guys). That means starting at the beginning with simple line drawing practice exercises, but these are just as important for pros.
I asked actual artists for their recommendations and whittled them down to eight daily practice line drawing exercises to work through. These aren't only for beginners – even experienced artists use these as part of regular practice and warm ups. So whatever your level, follow along below. Have a laugh at my attempts, hopefully do better yourself, and let me know in the comments section at the bottom if you have any tips for me.
I'm using a cheap pen tablet combined with Photoshop on a laptop, but you should be able to do all of these line drawing exercises in any of the best digital art software and on any of the best drawing tablets.
Some of these exercise will also work perfectly if your drawing the traditional way. The benefit of digital drawing is that you don't waste paper.
10 line drawing exercises for digital art practice
For each exercise, you'll want to create a new blank document. I'd suggest around 11 x 17 inches at 300 dpi. For most of them, I used a hard round brush at 15 pixels wide. Turn pressure sensitivity on, and turn off any smoothing – no cheating here; we want to train our hand without any help.
Fill the whole page – even if it starts to feel repetitive. The idea is to build muscle memory, which requires repetition. And keep that hand away from Ctrl + Z. There's no need to go back to fix anything. These are only practice art exercises. If you make a mistake, or your line isn't perfect, just try to make the next one better.
01. Three lines
Let's start at level one: basic line drawing to warm up and get hand and mind cooperating (at least that's the aim). In The Dynamic Bible, Peter Hahn recommends drawing lines and going over each one three times, first drawing from wrist, then from the elbow and then using the whole arm from the shoulder.
Make an invisible line first to get comfortable with the movement before committing to making the real mark. Start with short lines and gradually make them longer. And after you've done three straight lines, try moving to curved lines.
Tip: I found the slower and more hesitant I was, the worse the result. Lines should be much straighter if you draw them fast and don't stop.
02. Connect the points
Now let's try some coordination. We'll draw two dots, and then draw a line to connect them. Start with the points relatively close together, and then up the challenge by spacing them further apart.
Exercise 2.2: for a harder option, make a point and draw a series of straight lines right through it like spokes, starting on one side and ending on the other. The lines should be straight and cut precisely through the dot. The further you start away from the central dot, the harder it will be.
Tip: This is a bit like riding a bike. Go too slow and your line will probably wobble all over the place. Go too fast, and you might overshoot your destination.
Exercise 2.3: if you're taking this in your stride, you can take it up a step by adding curves. Make a point and draw ellipses around the result looks like petals. Each petal shape should end on the dot.
03. Lines in a box
Like the line drawing exercise above, this one also trains hand and eye coordination, while also working on consistency. Create two rectangles and fill them with vertical lines. The idea is that each line should stop and start on the border of the box, and not under or overshoot. It's more difficult than it looks, honestly!
In the second box, increase the space between each line. You can rotate your drawing tablet if needed. The aim is to train the hand to stay consistent on every stroke.
04. Zebra strokes
I found this to be a nice line drawing exercise to get used to the pressure sensitivity on my digital stylus (see our guide to the best Apple pencil alternatives for options). Hand draw a line straight down the page varying pressure so that it alternates thick to thin as you go down the page (I doubled the size of my brush for this exercise). For the next line, try to invert the pattern, so the line is thin next to thick and thick next to thin. Keep the lines close together as you fill the page.
05. Bullets
This is another line exercise to practise using pressure sensitivity. Start with a heavy stroke and lift the stylus as you move it down to create a tapering bullet effect. Some of my bullets look more like tadpoles, but you get the idea, right?
06. Ghosting
Moving on to shapes, we've already done some ghosting in the basic line drawing exercises at the beginning. The idea is to get used to aiming before you commit to making a mark. Draw an invisible circle in the air just above the surface of your tablet, and then gradually lower the stylus until it makes the mark.
The idea of 'ghosting' the movement before you commit is to get used to making marks with a confident single gesture rather than 'petting the line' by going back and forth. Fill the whole canvas. After circles, you could try making them into spheres, by adding cross section lines.
07. Ribbons and cylinders
A few different exercises here to introduce shape and depth. First, we'll try ribbons. Draw a random curved line on the page, repeat it as closely as possible, and then connect the two marks with parallel lines.
This is to get used to repeating the same line and with consistency and to seeing depth on the page (you can try adding perspective by making the second line smaller than the first. You can then try basic extrusions. Draw a shape, repeat it at a different size, and connect them with lines.
I then move on to cylinders going back in space. The aim here is to practise trying to create an impression of depth without using a perspective grid.
08. Flat textures
Finally, the last line drawing exercise I'm pracising is to build up to shading. Before you can hope to apply texture to a volume, you need to know what it looks like flat. So we'll create rectangles and fill them with texture. I tried three versions here: simple hatching, cross hatching and then stripes.
The aim is to start with heavy shading, close to completely dark and to gradually transition to completely light while moving across the rectangle. For more challenge, you could also try texture like scales or fur.
How often should I do line drawing practice exercises?
Artists recommend practising line drawing exercises like these a few times a week for several weeks to get better. In parallel, you might want to try exercises to learn to draw what you see or scribble art exercises.
When you're ready for something more advanced (and to learn from actual artists), see our bumper collection of how to draw tutorials and our pro sketching tips. Even then, it's always good to go back and do these basic line drawing exercises now and again. They can also serve as warm up exercises to use at the beginning of a sketching session.
How to I draw a clean line?
Speed is key to creating a smooth confident line. Unless you intentionally want to create rough edges, try to draw lines in a single swoop. Going over a line multiple times can give a timid and hesitant character to finished pieces.
How can I draw clean lines in Photoshop?
Zoom in for more precision and use you whole arm for smoother strokes. Try to practice for accuracy, but when it comes to actually drawing, you don’t need to worry about overshooting because you can always erase the tail end afterwards.
If you want a consistent line weight, you can turn off tapering by clicking the pressure sensitivity box. For long lines that are hard to draw in a single stroke, you can use the Photoshop pen tool, using the bezier handles on the path to define the curves.
