Practice Drawing Lines

The element of Art: lines

We will be covering the Elements of art as a series in several blogs. The elements are line, shape, form, space, texture, value, and color.

Drawing lines

Let’s talk lines. Lines are used to create shape, pattern, texture, space and movement. They come in all sorts; straight, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and curved lines. 

Can you remember the first time you tried to draw a straight line? It was probably anything but straight and more like extremely shaky. Guess what? With enough practice, even you can draw a straight line without an eraser. Let’s go over some tips and instructions on how to practice drawing lines.

Quick lines

Here’s a tip to achieve straightness: draw the lines quickly and lightly in various directions. The perfectionist in you might find it hard but try to practice lines without corrections, this will help you make the movements feel natural. Repeat this until your page is full or turn your paper around and use the back to draw some more lines until you feel you’re getting it.

Repeat lines

To make sure you’re actually improving rather than just drawing random lines, you can go over the same line a few times. Draw a short line using only slight pressure, if you press too hard your line will turn out shaky. Then draw over it again, and again. Don't go too slow or it won't have any effect.

Natural lines

To improve the connection between your hands and eyes try drawing a line and then next to it try drawing the same line. You need to keep practicing until the hand movements start feeling natural. You can draw a curved line and another one next to it. When you draw using a reference photo you want to be able to draw what you see as naturally as possible. Doing these simple exercises will help you do that. 

Practice these steps as often as necessary until your lines are not shaky anymore!

In the drawing course within my membership, I will teach you the basic elements of art step by step and give you plenty to practice with. Want to join? Check out the details here.

Emmy

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Want to read more? Check out the other topics here.