The Best Drawing Exercises to Boost Your Skills in 2025

Learning to draw has never been easier—or more overwhelming. With thousands of free tutorials, courses, and videos available online, finding the right way to improve your skills can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Too many choices often lead to confusion, frustration, and wasted time—time that could be spent actually drawing and improving.

In this post, we’ll cut through the noise and show you the best drawing exercises you can start right now to boost your skills quickly and effectively. Whether you're a beginner or looking to refine your technique, these proven exercises will help you level up fast!

Developed by ArtWod founder Antonio Stappaerts, the contour manipulation technique is a powerful method for understanding and drawing complex forms by starting with simple shapes and learning how to manipulate their contours.

Basic shapes like cylinders, spheres, and boxes all have contour lines wrapping around them both vertically and horizontally. By mastering how these lines flow, you can transform a simple cylinder into intricate forms—like a goat’s horn or a dynamically swimming shark—with ease.

What makes contour manipulation so revolutionary? It allows artists to break down any real-life object into a structured, mannequin-like form. This not only improves accuracy but also boosts your ability to draw confidently from imagination. Whether you're sketching characters, creatures, or environments, this technique will take your drawing skills to the next level!

Form combination is a powerful technique that allows artists to build complex objects by merging simple shapes like spheres, cylinders, and boxes. By mastering this approach, you can create anything—from detailed characters and creatures to intricate mechanical designs—with a strong sense of structure and volume.

The concept is simple: every complex object can be broken down into a combination of basic forms. By understanding how these forms connect, overlap, and interact in space, you gain the ability to construct dynamic, believable drawings with confidence.

For example, a human torso can be simplified into a combination of a box (ribcage) and a cylinder (abdomen), while an airplane can be built using a mix of cylinders, cones, and boxes. This method helps you visualize depth, maintain proportion, and even manipulate forms to suit your artistic vision.

Just like form combination, form subtraction is a powerful technique that helps artists break down and construct complex shapes with speed and precision. Instead of adding forms together, this method involves removing sections from a base shape to create new, dynamic structures.

Many real-world objects can be designed using form subtraction. For example, by subtracting a cylinder from a box, you can generate a completely new shape with depth and dimension. When combined with contour manipulation, these subtracted forms can evolve into intricate and visually striking designs—all built from simple structures.

Mastering form subtraction will give you the ability to analyze and deconstruct any object, making it easier to draw with accuracy and confidence. Whether you're creating mechanical designs, character armor, or architectural elements, this technique will skyrocket your drawing skills and take your creativity to the next level!

Form wrapping is a powerful yet often overlooked technique that helps artists understand and visualize objects in three-dimensional space. Unlike traditional drawing methods, this approach teaches you how to “wrap” complex 2D shapes around simple 3D forms like cylinders and spheres—creating a more realistic sense of volume and structure.

This technique is especially useful for designing armor, helmets, clothing, and organic shapes, as it helps you see how these forms sit, bend, and flow around a surface. By improving your spatial awareness, you’ll gain the ability to draw from imagination with greater accuracy and believability.

Mastering form wrapping will take your drawings to the next level—allowing you to create dynamic, three-dimensional designs that feel grounded and realistic. Whether you're working on character design, industrial design, or creature concepts, this skill is an absolute game-changer!

These drawing exercises are guaranteed to level up your skills in 2025—but knowledge alone isn’t enough. The real progress comes from consistent practice and applying what you’ve learned.

The best way to do this? Join the ArtWod Beginner Road, where you'll get step-by-step guidance, structured exercises, and progress tracking—all in a fun and engaging learning experience. Start today and take your drawing skills to the next level!