3 Drawing Challenges That Will Unlock Your Creativity

Adolfo Serra shares exercises that will encourage you to imagine, play, and experiment, and unlock your creativity

Chance, mistakes, games, limits, and freedom: all can serve to help you unleash your imagination, create a language, and find your voice. In this video, illustrator Adolfo Serra (@adolfoserra) shares three drawing challenges that will push you to experiment with manual techniques and unlock your creativity.

Gather up all the art materials you have at home; it’s time to put your creativity to the test.

Challenge nº.1: Start with a smudge of color

Fetch the materials, colors, paints, pencils, and pens that you have around the house and lay them on the table. Start creating a series of illustrations beginning with smudges of color or whatever shape awakens your imagination. Draw without thinking, combine techniques, and let the ideas flow.

Observe what forms on the page and the randomness of the smudges. Then, take the reins and turn what’s in front of you into something interesting. Try, mix, imagine–this is key.

Challenge nº.2: Draw with two pencils

This challenge arises from the question, “What happens to the lines in our drawings?” Take any object and draw it. The fun part is that you should do so using two pencils, one in each hand. Don’t overthink, don’t try to control them, nor make the lines perfect. The point of this challenge is for you to analyze what happens to the lines, how they move, and how they behave; normally you would try and control the hand with which you draw best, but just let it move freely.

Use the resulting drawing as a base and add details, color, bring it to life. Play with everyday objects and turn them on their heads to create new illustrations.

Challenge nº.3: Find inspiration in play

This exercise arises from the question, “What happens when we don’t know what to draw?”. Create a pack of cards that have characters, settings, and places on them, and leave your ideas up to chance. Shuffle the cards and then, without looking, pick several. Based on whatever cards you end up with, create an illustration using any material you like.

Play with tools, textures, colors, and shape so that they're not what your usually expect them to be.

These exercises will show you that you don’t necessarily need to create a sketch before you start drawing. If you want to learn more techniques and processes that will help you illustrate embracing manual techniques, check out the course, Illustration Techniques to Unlock your Creativity, by Adolfo Serra. You will learn new processes and techniques that set your hands free.

You may also like:

–Drawing Prompts by Mattias Adolfsson
–5 Free Tutorials to Spark Your Creativity
–7 Tools to Spark Your Inner Creativity