As with anything, when you want to get better at drawing, practice is essential. If you want to improve your drawing but find yourself looking at a blank piece of paper and no idea where to start, this list may be what you’re looking for.

Activity 1 - Still life 

You can put together a still life out of anything anything around the house. If you’re lucky you’ll have a beautifully arranged vase of flowers, a stack of vintage books, and a bowl of exotic fruits lying around. Failing that however, jars of jam, a stack of tinned vegetables or a half eaten bowl of cornflakes will do the job just fine. You can set these up, in good light if possible, and do a pencil sketch or be a little more creative and try different still life styles. 

• Pop Art - Flattened down to 2d, use bright colours and thick bold lines.
• Cubist - Mashing up different view points in one drawing e.g. draw a can from straight on and then draw the top from above in the same drawing. The more objects, the more angles you can add in. 
• Limited Colour Palette - Think of Van Gogh’s yellow sunflowers or his blue period. Try creating a still life and limit your palette to shades of one colour. 

Activity 2 - Social Portrait Drawing 

Get on zoom/Skype/houseparty and draw your friends. Set a ten minute timer and try and get in the main features. The more you do this, the easier it will become to sketch out important shapes and lines and your subjects will become more recognisable. You could also make a game out of it. Pick a celebrity to draw in 10 minutes and try and guess each other’s. 

Activity 3 - Lucky Dip

Write down a list of animals, any that you like. Write down a list objects. Mine include things like balloons, glasses, a teacup, a bath, an apple. Cut out each one, fold and put into a hat/jar/empty icecream tub. Have one for animals and one for objects.
First pick an animal, look for images on google or in books, simplify it into shapes and draw them in simplified form. Then redraw based off your own sketch, simplifying again and if you want exaggerate angles or curves. Repeat this several times until you have a simplified version that you’re happy with. Then pick an object and do the same.
Finally, put the two together and you have an illustration. A monkey holding balloons, a fox wearing a crown, a hamster in a teacup, a giraffe wearing glasses...the possibilities are endless. 

Keep up with doing some kind of drawing every day and you’re sure to see an improvement. Good luck and let me know how you get on!

For those of you with children at home, check out my other blogs simple home learning ideas and a list of free home education resources.