Warm-up exercises to get ready for a month of play and exploration
Before you sit down for an art session or embark on a month-long art adventure, it is always fun to take a moment and warm-up a little. Here are a few ideas!
Monday we will share the first official prompt of Paint Yourself Happy February. In the meantime, we thought it fun to share a few warm-up exercises for you to try over the weekend.
If you want more info, and a few more warm-up prompts, check out our Substack to get the prompts directly in your inbox!
Clean your palette
Traditionally, we used this prompt with the meaning of using leftover color in our watercolor palette. We tend to not wash these in case we need these colors for another painting and some of us might have a few dirty palettes laying around our creative space.
Well here is your permission to clean them and actually use the leftovers!
Add some water to the palette.
With a brush, wash all of the color that is still on the palette.
Put all that wonderful mix on a page. Combine this with another prompt (such as making lines) or simply make a wonderful wash of color to add stuff to later on.
If your current medium of choice is not watercolors, you can adapt this prompt:
If you sew, you can collage or make a tiny quilts with all the fabric scraps, I know you have been keeping for “some day”.
Acrylic palettes can be wiped out with a palette knife, or add a layer of acrylic medium over the dried colors and try peeling everything off.
Play with all the pencil sharpening bits you have hiding in the that sharpener.
There are opportunities everywhere!
Paint a whole page blue (or pink, or green, or yellow….)
Choose a page in your sketchbook.
Pick a color, your fave, one you’ve been avoiding, one you are curious about.
Fill the whole page.
Choose tiny repetitive marks, or make a whole wash of the color. The choice is yours!
Make lines all over the page
This one is pretty self explanatory…. make lines. But there are so many ways to make lines.
Set a timer for 2 minutes.
Draw lines or a line during those 2 minutes.
You can use all your different brushes, or a simple pencil.
Simply concentrate on making the lines.
Maybe once the timer goes off you still want to continue, it is your practice. Keep going if you enjoyed it, or switch it up.
Wet your paper and drop color over it
Some unexpected results can happen here….. and fun results! Or pretty weird ones.
Wet your paper.
Drop some color in there.
Watercolor, acrylic paint, ink, highlighter, marker…. anything is good to try!
Swatch your colors
This is something that always gets me in the mood to play, swatching colors. Use a whole page and make different blobs of color. Or lines of different colors. Or smoosh them all together. So many ways to swatch colors.
And you can swatch colors in any medium!
As I write this, I am having an urge…. to make a page swatching all mediums in green, yellow, etc. This is going to be my warm up during the week end!
Enjoy yourself!
This is a moment for you to simply get reacquainted with your art supplies. Or simply say hello to them if you’ve not left them. Just enjoy, don’t overthink anything and have fun! It is play time after all!
We hope you find an idea or two to warm up your playing reflexes during the weekend!
And get ready for the first prompt on Monday!
Simone and Stephanie