Doing warm-up exercises isn’t just for athletics though.

Warming up can be a great way to prepare your mind and hands before you tackle a bigger project.

One great class for both beginners and seasoned artists is Nitika Ale’sLearn How to Paint Abstract Acrylic Floral Paintings.

Thumbnail paintings from Nitika Ale’s warm-up for flower paintings

Ale encourages her students to become more confident in their work, focusing on color-mixing and loosening up brushstrokes.

Scroll down to check out five ways you might warm up to create your next masterpiece.

Bonus points if you don’t lift your hand from the page.

A blind contour drawing of the artist’s feet, which serves as a good example of a warm up exercise

Photo: M. Gunn, viaWikimedia Commons(CC BY-SA 4.0)

This is especially great for practicing drawing oh-so-difficult hands and feet.

Sketching a Dozen Patterned Circles

Photo: maritime_m/Depositphotos

Fill up a page in your sketchbook with 12 circles.

Then draw a new pattern inside each circle.

Hand drawn patterns in circles.

Photo: maritime_m/Depositphotos

Start with the lightest pressure and slowly increase until you are making the darkest value possible.

If you are a painter, gradients can help you become an expert in color-mixing.

Doodling

Quickly make a large random doodle on paper.

Nitika Ale warms up by mixing colors into a gradient in her painting course.

Once again, don’t look at the page while you doodle.

Then take what you drew and turn the doodle into something more representational, like an animal.

This again gets you to look at something in a new way.

Nitika Ale warms up for painting larger pieces by doing a series of thumbnails.

Thumbnail Warm-ups

Draw two to four squares on your page.

Next, use the remaining thumbnails to alter your original idea.

Should an object be larger in the frame?

Or would it help to add more contrast to your shades?