15 Tips To Improve Your Drawing Skills - Daisy Yellow Art

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People are born with innate drawing talent or they are not.{Fact? Fiction? Urban Legend? Fairy Tale?}

post updated 10/17/25

Drawing is making marks on paper. To draw well, you've got to practice. That’s the only secret.

When my kids were little, I needed things to do while waiting everywhere from swimming lessons to soccer practice to dentist appointments. This was many years ago, and I remember carrying my iPod (loaded with podcasts & music), notebook, and pens. I drew repeating patterns, alphabets, words, knots, and mandalas. It never occurred to me that I would/could get better; I figured it was something other people automatically knew how to do.

What I learned? If you draw a lot, you get better. It might seem like magic with charms and pixie dust and the perfect fountain pen, but honestly it’s just about drawing.

Before we dive in, let me frame this practice. Many of us want to draw realistic objects, people, and scenes. This might be from reference images or memory. Ahead, I’ve put together essential exercises to build the hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills to improve every type of line and drawing.

This kind of intentional practice, used as exercises or a warm-up for a long drawing session, unlocks everything else.

My go-to pens for doodling & drawing & mark-making:Faber-Castell PITT artist markers, Sakura Pigma Professional brush pens, Sakura Pigma Brush Pens, Zebra Sarasa, and Uniball UM-151 🌈💚✨

My favorite books about drawing & keeping an illustrated sketchbook:Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson and An Illustrated Life by Danny Gregory

Looking back at 18 years of drawing I think of coffee shops, the carpool line, waiting on hold, waiting in line at the DMV, the breakfast table, the back porch, and book stores. Drawing in notebooks and journals all over the world on planes, buses, and trains. While most of what I draw is abstract, I’ve sketched landscapes, cathedrals, and people as well.

Developing drawing skills is a gradual process. Look at your progress over a long time frame and be patient with yourself.

If you compare your work today with your work from a month ago, you won't see clear differences. Use a longer time frame: compare current drawings with those you did 1-2 years ago and you’ll see a difference! Progress is measured not in hours, but in months and years. It’s clear when I look back through my journals — every time I challenged myself to try a new idea, I made a leap forward.

What paper to use? Try all sorts of papers and notebooks and gradually you’ll start noticing differences. Paper & pen choices are so personal to the way you draw. Usually, I use moleskine journals, field notes notebooks, loose watercolor paper, and index cards.

Try index cards! Index cards are a key part of my creative practice. Each summer, I facilitate the Daisy Yellow Index-Card-a-Day Challenge which is a fiesta of creative fun (2025 was our 15th challenge)! My latest digital zine is Daisy Yellow № 20: Index Card Art Love.

Sale Zine #20: Index Card Art Love Sale Price: $6.00 Original Price: $8.00

Think of drawing as making a series or collection of lines or marks. The art of drawing is about moving the drawing tool and understanding how to convey/transform what you see into marks on the page. I would first suggest working on refining the fine motor movements involved in drawing by trying to capture the essence (the idea) of simple subjects.

Things to practice in order to improve your line work. Mark-making, doodling, sketching, scribbling, automatic drawing, contour drawing, gestural marks, and hand-lettering. Oh, and early in the learning process, I made the decision not to use a ruler to make lines - I figured that this would be a way to push myself to get better at drawing them and I didn’t want to get too perfectionistic.

How to decide what to draw? Look around. Ideas are everywhere. Find things to draw in your backpack: geometric designs, book covers, and even UPC codes! You can keep an album of reference photographs on your phone.

I’d start by choosing several of the exercises below as a warm-up or short art session. If you have more time, use your reference photos and draw the kind of thing you want to get better at. For example, if you want to get better at landscapes, draw landscapes.

How does your style evolve? After spending two decades in corporate accounting and data analysis, it was refreshing to do art! It was like I was in high school again, drawing patterns in my room late at night with Jackson Browne or The Stones playing on the radio.I never thought about my style changing or evolving. I just found the process mesmerizing.

How many minutes do you need to draw each day? I know you love to draw or you wouldn’t be trying to get better! Please don’t set a timer or make it feel like work. Actively find a block of time each day and nurture your art habit. My black & white & grey & stickers drawing project has been running since 2016 (and I was already drawing daily before that) and my lines have definitely improved! The key is to show up consistently. That’s your first goal. You can definitely get better at drawing in short daily sessions.

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Fifteen (15) daily warm-ups and exercises to improve your drawing skills

1. Fill a sketchbook with freehand doodles

Start a drawing habit. Dedicate 15-30 minutes each day to your sketchbook. Draw whatever you want to draw. The key is returning every day to keep those creative wheels spinning!!! Here’s a flip-thru of Field Notes #1 where I just drew every day for fun.

Draw as much as you wish on one page… and turn the page whenever it’s finished. If you don’t feel satisfied or happy with the end result, as long as you love the process of drawing, keep going nonetheless. And it doesn’t need to be literally a page per day, because some drawings take longer than others. It might take me several days to fill two pages, but it also might be lightning fast. Try adding details, changing things around, and toying with ideas that pop into your mind. Practice developing different types of lines and patterns.

2. Draw ordinary things

Look around your room and focus on one ordinary everyday item. Jot notes about what you drew, the weather, your mood. Think of the sketchbook page as an art journal or diary. Optional: add a little color with markers or watercolor.

3. Draw circles

Circles are tricky but they’re easier if you work fast. Draw circular shapes without judging results. Each drawing tool will work a bit differently. This exercise helps your dexterity and improves precision (while being meditative and calming too). Try not to evaluate everything you draw, just draw! Get into the process. Throw some circles into almost any page, as part of a pattern or to add playful bouncy energy. Keep experimenting and practicing! You can draw overlapping circles. Or draw loose concentric circles by putting circles inside and around other circles.

4. Fill a grid with patterns, marks & symbols

Draw a grid and fill with marks, patterns, doodles, whatever floats into your mind.

5. Write words & lyrics on sketchbook pages

Writing and lettering is a form of drawing. Letters are shapes! On these pages, I drew block letters and added a little shading on one side for a little depth. Pull up lyrics or a quotation as a drawing reference. Try filling a particular space with the words. It takes practice to string series of words together first in a defined space, then in rows, and then a full page. As you draw, toy with kerning, expanding or contracting the spacing between letters, within letters, between words, etc.

6. Fill a notebook with letters of the alphabet

Dedicate an entire journal to letters & numbers! I have made several alphabet journals. I also fill pages in my day-to-day sketchbook with letters as quickly as I can. Sometimes I do an entire page of variations of just one letter.

7. Draw faces

Portrait drawing isn’t something I do often. Mine are wonky but better than when I started! If I only drew faces, things would progress even faster. Draw faces on index cards or draw a grid of boxes in your journal and fill each box with a tiny face. Experiment with hair styles and expressions. How many tiny faces can you fit on a page? Try not to evaluate the goodness or badness or anythingness of your faces. I find faces really difficult to draw, but at the same time intriguing to see the results.

8. Draw repeating patterns

Think of a little icon, pattern, motif, symbol, shape, or mark. Repeat it across the page. Try to think of as many different shapes as you can. Here are pages of patterns with various pens in a Field Notes. Fabric, wallpaper, sea shells, tree branches, and seed pods could spark a pattern. Simplify to the essence (the idea) of what you see.

9. Paint repeating patterns

At first it seems counter-intuitive to paint when you want to get better at drawing. But in my experience painting with a small brush (or even a liner brush) improves your drawing skills!! I went through a period of many months where I was painting more than drawing, and when I went back to drawing, I was nervous that I’d lost my skills. And I was actually better! These shapes were painted in gouache and a small brush.

10. Draw a shape that you find challenging

What kinds of shapes do you find most challenging or frustrating? A perfect theme for a sketchbook page! Study the parts/components that go into the shape. To get more familiar with how to draw vehicles, I drew taxis swooshing into the taxi stand as I waited for my brother to arrive at the airport. This was before the uber era, about 6 years after I started drawing. I tried to capture the “essence” as rapidly as possible given that they were moving! When you start, things are always wonky, they aren’t going to be picture-perfect. I look back at these taxis and I love this little collection.

11. Draw knots

Knots are a great mental and creative challenge to draw. Invent a knot, or tie a rope in a knot, and draw it.

12. Illustrate your day

Take your journal with you and draw what you see while you are waiting. Here I was waiting at the orthopedic surgeon’s office preparing for foot surgery. It also helps calm anxiety! Just a quick rendering to capture the essence or idea of the scene rather than the precise scene. And it’s OK if it’s utterly inaccurate. It still helps you with translating what you see into lines in your journal (plus documentation is fun).

13. Draw mandalas

Start in the middle with a circle or star and build outward, drawing freehand without a ruler. The lines do not need to be absolutely symmetrical, try for sort-of-symmetrical. Index cards are great for drawing small designs and practicing hand-lettering.

14. Experiment with different drawing tools

Use art materials such as charcoal, pastels & Neocolors. When you change your drawing tools you change your experience and naturally explore different kinds of marks. Experiment by moving your entire arm to make fluid gestural marks. When you go back to a pencil or pen you'll have new ideas and perspectives. This rainbowy drawing is part of my Mixed Media Amusements workshop; drawn with Caran D'Ache Neocolor Wax Crayons (see Neocolor Love).

15. Draw organic shapes

This example is from way back in 2012 when I walked around the garden doing rough sketches to try to capture shapes. I knew that I couldn’t draw the exact shapes, so I relaxed and just played. Please don’t get discouraged — it takes a long time to start seeing progress — keep going!

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