10 Skill-Building Digital Drawing Exercises 💪
By: Zaira Khemani
Tags: Digital Drawing, Procreate, Drawing, Digital Art, Illustration

10 Skill-Building Digital Drawing Exercises 💪

Are you just starting with drawing digitally? Do you need a quick warm-up after a long break? These fast and invigorating exercises will get you right back in the game by refreshing your memory and preparing your skills.

1. Take control

It’s time to grab your stylus and show it who’s boss. For this exercise, practice controlling the pressure of your strokes. Press firmly for thick, opaque lines. Touch gently for soft, faded lines.

2. Same old stuff

Draw a few small squares on your Procreate canvas and fill each of them with a different pattern. This exercise will help build muscle memory and pattern repetition skills. You can draw stripes, swirls, flowers, zig-zags, and more. Repeat each pattern until you know it by heart.

3. Blend In

Draw a thick, red stripe at the top of your page, orange in the middle, and yellow at the bottom. Finally, take your blender brush and turn the thickness almost to the top. Blend the colors in horizontal strokes to create a gradient effect. Try this with a few more color combinations.

4. Get in Shape

Draw a large circle without guidance from the QuickShape tool. Inside it, draw another one that has a smaller diameter. Continue the pattern until you can’t get any tinier. You can practice this exercise with squares, rectangles, diamonds, or even hearts.

5. Straight Away

Sketch out a horizontal line, and try to match it by adding a parallel line under it. Once you get the hang of straight lines, try squiggles or shapes. The sky’s the limit!

6. In a Mix

Find a yellow color and try to find a color that would mix well with it. Test different mixtures and results to create a scale of values. An alternative is to create color sequences and combinations. Will you use any of the palettes in your artworks?

7. Santa’s Elves

Become an official tester by experimenting with some quirky brushes you’ve never used. Did you find one you like? Are there any brushes you’re never going to use? It’s one of Procreate’s best features, so optimize it to your best advantage!

8. Brush Factory

You’ve tried out all the funkiest Procreate brushes, so now what? Are you ready to create your own? Tap the + button in the brushes dropdown menu and experiment with all the textures, shapes, tones, and other endless possibilities!

9. Negative Space

Cover your canvas with either a single or mixed color. Treat the eraser tool like a brush as you use it to carve out a design, drawing, or pattern. What is different about drawing with an eraser versus a real pencil? What is similar?

10. Change Your Mind

This last exercise is not something you can physically do within Procreate; it’s more of a mental process. You could call it a mindset shift. Just close your eyes, take a deep breath, and think about all the reasons you love drawing. Think about what you excel in, what you could do better, or what inspires and motivates you to draw. Over which of these thoughts do you have control? How can you transform the dissatisfactory components of your skills into meaningful assets? This exercise may be the most important — you’re not just thinking; you’re changing your entire mindset.