9 Drawing Warm-Up Exercises That Will Improve Your Ability To Rotate Primitive Forms

Warm-Up 1: Rotating Boxes
Warm-Up 2: Irregularly Stacked Boxes
Warm-Up 3: Boxes Moving Along A Line
Warm-Up 4: Cylinders (Moving Along A Line)
Warm-Up 5: Primitive Forms, Rotated
Warm-Up 6: Box Rotated Around Line
Warm-Up 7: Box Swirling Around Line
Warm-Up 8: Boxes On The Floor
Warm-Up 9: Forms Placed Against Each Other

The exercises described below are part of this website's warm-up drills in the Art Flashcards system. They were inspired by this gem of a YouTube video: 25 Essential Drawing Exercises: Unlock your Imagination by brokendraw .

In another guide , you can find four exercises that help you move from two to three dimensions.

Here, we will focus on working with the primitive forms: the box, cylinder, sphere, cone, and pyramid, through exercises that help you become better at drawing them from imagination at any angle.

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The box is often seen as the fundamental basic element when working in a three-dimensional space. If you can rotate a box and know how to draw things inside a rotated box, you can draw anything at any angle. In addition, you can build things from boxes.

To draw boxes well, it is important to make sure the ribs of the box go to one of three possible vanishing points.

A mistake beginners often make is to let the lines diverge from each other as they move into the distance when they should be converging. Another mistake is drawing edges that are too tilted. Be on the lookout for these two mistakes. See this 3D model for reference:

You can practice this by just filling a page with boxes of various sizes and orientations. It can help to look at a real box. For that, you can use a 3D model for reference.

It is also useful to practice randomly scattered boxes from a reference, for example, using the 3D model below for scattered random boxes.

If you draw random rotated boxes from imagination, you will initially draw them separately, isolated on the page. In this model you can see that they overlap. Practice using this 3D model to get a feel for what it looks like if boxes are spread randomly through space.

A good exercise is to draw a matrix of boxes, each rotated in controlled ways, to see if you can give each box an intended rotation. For example, draw a matrix of boxes that are slowly rotated around the x or z axis as they move along the x and y axes.

There is a 3D model also for that:

There is also a Perspective Drawing Game that lets you hone your intuition, your ability to freehand draw rotated boxes from imagination:

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After learning to rotate a box, a next step can be to learn to stack rotated boxes.

You can also practice drawing stacked boxes using this 3D model to get a feel for how they would look.

There is also a Perspective Drawing Game that lets you hone your intuition, your ability to freehand draw rotated boxes from imagination:

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A useful exercise is to draw boxes along a line:

It trains you to rotate the box in a controlled fashion while keeping its proportions the same.

There is also a 3D model that helps you practice drawing boxes that move along a line.

There is also a Perspective Drawing Game that lets you hone your intuition, your ability to freehand draw rotated boxes from imagination:

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It trains you to rotate the cylinders in a controlled fashion while keeping its proportions the same.

As we gain control over our ability to draw boxes, it is useful to learn to use it to rotate other things inside. Here, we will place a cylinder inside the box.

Note also the use of the diagonal lines and construction lines to help construct the cylinder’s circle and ellipse caps.

You can practice drawing the circle and ellipse-shaped caps of the cylinders independently by using this 3D model:

And practice drawing cylinders in boxes from observation using 3D models:

We can practice that further by drawing a cylinder that moves along a line.

There is also a 3D model that allows you to see what it would look like, and helps you practice that:

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Fill a page with the primitive forms — the box, sphere, cylinder, cone, and pyramid — rotated in various orientations.

You can also use the following 3D models to practice that:

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This warm-up was inspired by Zefdraws .

Draw a box that rotates around one rib. Between this warm-up and warm-up 7, this one is easier.

A: Draw a through-line.

B: Draw a box that has one rib on the through-line. Make sure the other ribs that are parallel to that rib are also parallel to the through-line.

C: Add more boxes, rotated.

It can be useful to practice drawing this from observation using a 3D model first, to see what these rotated boxes typically look like. You can find a 3D model for this here:

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This warm-up was inspired by Zefdraws .

Draw a box that rotates around one rib. Between this warm-up and warm-up 7, this one is harder.

A: Draw a through-line and circles around the through-line.

B: Draw a box that aligns against the circles.

C: Draw similar boxes at different rotations.

It can be useful to practice drawing this from observation using a 3D model first, to see what these rotated boxes typically look like. You can find a 3D model for this here:

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This warm-up was inspired by a model someone requested. It is fun and easier than it looks.

Kim Jung Gi famously said he saw boxes, and people standing in them. It would thusly stand to reason that it is useful to practice drawing randomly oriented boxes on a floor!

That is what this warm-up is about: draw boxes on a floor.

This exercise is helpful in training you to move objects in space.

Boxes Placed Against Each Other

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Stacked Extruded Shapes

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