Drawing Practice Exercises to Fill Your Sketchbook

Drawing Practice – Exercises for Beginners

Every beginner artist wants to know what they should draw. Today we are going to look at some really easy drawing practice exercises you can do at any skill level. This tutorial came about as I was going through a bunch of old sketchbooks. Most of them are those cheap ones you can pick up at any store that sells crayons and markers. You know the ones, they are spiral bound and have extremely cheap paper.

And most of them are not even half filled. Most of the pages are still blank. So I wanted to do some practice drawings that could be used to help fill these half empty sketchbooks up.

How to Fill Your Sketchbook

There are a million different ways to fill you sketchbook. The problem is that we often try to fill our sketchbooks with full blown works of art. And this isn’t the best approach, especially if you’re using one of those cheap sketchbooks. And if you think about it, it’s called a sketchbook, which implies it’s for sketching, not drawing.

What is the difference between drawing and sketching you ask? Well, sketching is usually done in a loose, quick method. While drawing is typically more deliberate and controlled with your lines. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t draw in your sketchbook, but… if you’re goal is to fill them up then you’re going to want to do some drawing practice exercises instead.

These exercises should be quick and loose for the best results. Doing a series of quick drawings is one such exercise.

So let’s grab an old sketchbook, and something to draw with so we can get started.

* Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. This means I receive small commissions for purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you.

Art Supplies

Step 1 – Find a Sketchbook

In the supplies I listed an old sketchbook. One of the reasons I wanted to do this drawing practice exercise was to start filling the pages of my old sketchbooks that are laying around. Really, you can use whatever paper you want to use for the exercise.

I have an old sketchbook from when I first learned how to draw caricatures back in 2004. This seemed like the logical choice for me for this exercise.

If you’ve been drawing for any length of time, then you probably have some old sketchbooks as well. But if not, you could use a new sketchbook or just some loose paper. Anything you have laying around will work. One of the keys to doing these drawing exercises is to stay loose and relaxed.

Step 2 – Decide What to Draw

I’m going to be drawing cartoon and caricature type eyes. You could do realistic eyes, Manga eyes, or animal eyes. Or something unrelated to eyes altogether. There are many options for your own topic. Try to choose something you feel like your not very good at drawing.

Afterall, the idea here is to get some drawing practice in. So take this opportunity to practice drawing something you can’t draw well. Growth is achieved by stepping out of your comfort zone. If you can’t decide what you should draw, then just draw some eyes.

Or, you can look through our list of drawing prompts that’s available in another article about doing week long art challenges. What you draw isn’t nearly as important as how much you draw. And how you draw it doesn’t matter much either.

You can draw 2D, 3D, cartoony, realistic, or anything else you can think of. By practicing your drawing skills you’ll develop what’s needed to create any type of drawing you want. What I mean is that drawing a dog isn’t the only way to get better at drawing a dog.

Step 3 – Practice Drawing Eyes

The goal is to fill the entire page of your sketchbook. This shouldn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes to do, if you move quickly and keep your drawings loose and relaxed. When working on your drawing practice exercise you can use references if you want them. Or you can try drawing from your imagination. Either way is fine.

Step 4 – Practice Drawing More Eyes

Now choose a different drawing utensil and practice drawing eyes again, or whatever you decided to practice drawing. This is a great opportunity to get more comfortable with a medium you haven’t used much. You could try pen and ink, ballpoint pen, brush pen, watercolor pencils, paint, or anything else you have access to that you think would be fun to use.

I was able to draw 100 eyes in these two pages of my sketchbook. And it didn’t take nearly as long as I though it would take. When filling your pages you want to draw big enough to get some details in. But small enough that you can get enough drawing practice in. If it you can only fit a few drawings on a page then you won’t get the required repetition in that’s needed to see good improvements in you art skills.