Warming Up

Why do artists warm up?

Just like prepping for a work out, we warm up to avoid muscular, ligament, and joint injury by slowly building up to the more strenuous activities we plan on performing. While drawing isn’t quite as strenuous as lifting weights or going on a two mile run, we are still requiring strenuous and repetitive activity from our arm, hand, and fingers. These actions require a lot of fine motor movements that can put stress on our hands and wrists and can cause issues like tendinitis, carpal tunnel, and arthritis. So warming up before a drawing session helps to avoid issues like these that can develop over weeks, months, or even years of small repetitive movements.

Alternatively, if you are a person who struggles to get on task, switch between tasks, or have a hard time redirecting your focus, warming up can help bridge the gap of transition. Having a set regiment will tell your brain and body to prepare for the up coming switch by stretching and doing a few warm up drawings before you do anything else.

Not everyone wants to or will take the time to do a formal warm up, and for those people: if you don’t warm up, you will still have a “warm up period” where drawing will feel stiff and uncomfortable for the first 10 - 20 minutes.

Standing Stretches

Whether or not you are going to stand during your actual drawing session, it is beneficial to start in the standing position. We will be starting with stretches before moving onto some drawing exercises. These are to be performed while standing and before you start a drawing session. After a couple of minutes your blood will be flowing through your arms and hands, as well as having worked out any kinks in your muscles and tendons that might have otherwise caused a strain in these areas.

Arms

Create big circles in the air with your arms rotating at the shoulders. You want the shoulder joint to loosen up as well as getting blood flow to the area. Start in one direction and switch to the other halfway through; about 10 or 20 seconds. Once this is complete you will want to switch to rotating your elbow joints, remembering to switch directions half way through. Before moving on, repeat the same motion - but this time rotating your wrists in both directions.