I have very rarely done warm-up sketches.

I understand the value of warm-up sketches. I admit, when I was younger, I thought, “Why do I need to warm up my drawing muscles? Why can’t I just draw?” Of course it helps to loosen up the fingers, the hand, and the arm before doing any drawing that is meant to end up as a finished piece.

But when you have a limited amount of time to spend at the drawing table as I do, you tend to want to make the most of the time available, and that usually means getting right down to the work. So, in lieu of a warm-up sketch, I’d usually start laying out a full comic page to get my fingers and hand moving, so by the time I hit actual penciling I was more-or-less “warmed up”.

But warm-up sketches do more than just limber up the joints, ligaments, and muscles. They also get your head in the right space.

For example, I used to perform in a marching drumline, and each rehearsal we would go through various exercises. Before a show, we’d do the same, on site. Going through these warm-ups allowed us acclimate to each other’s playing. It allows us to “warm-up” our listening and adjustment skills. Warm-ups helped our brains to wake-up, to become active, to become ready for all other related music activities we’d be doing that day.

It’s the same with drawing. Let’s face it: making comics is fun, but it’s also work. And when you’re drawing page after page after page of the same story, it’s nice to be able to draw something unrelated to take a break.

Warm-up sketches allows the artist to play. It gets the head in the right mental space for the drawing session about to come. It allows the artist to practice things not necessarily being implemented in the main project.

And it’s supposed to be fun.

Again: not that your main project isn’t fun, but it can become repetitive, which can suck a bit of the fun out of it. There are things that we can do to recharge ourselves, and a warm-up sketch is one of those things.

BUT – my warm-up sketches tend to take way too long. Because I get into it. I want to work the sketch into a finished piece. And that, of course, gets in the way of doing other work, like penciling, writing, and working out concepts. What I need to do is limit the time I spend doing a warm-up sketch while simultaneously working on something that needs doing that isn’t part of the project I’m working on (ie. concept work for future project). I have a few ideas I’ll be playing with, so we’ll see how things work out.

Until next time…