Following on from yesterday's ellipse practice I returned to Drawing for the Absolute and Utter Beginner and started on Chapter 3 - Adding Accuracy. This is where the author moves onto sketching and being able to ensure that these seemingly loose lines are actually quite precise.
In effect this meant that I needed to practise drawing straight lines, both horizontal and vertical, of differing lengths and position. Usefully the edges of the paper act as a guide and it's possible to follow these reasonably faithfully - with just the ends of the lines tending to lean to the left or right. Surprisingly I quite enjoyed this task and it's rather rewarding to create a forest of lines which are more or less parallel:
Next up were circles of varying size with the instruction that I shouldn't try and draw a perfect circle with one stroke; instead laying down a number of lines helps you to even out the shape and work towards something symmetrical. This seemed to work well and I quite like the bubble effect which this produced:
Finally I attempted some horizontal ellipses with the idea being to create decent symmetrical forms. In this some of my attempts were ok but many either bulged too much or slumped down on one side (as indicated by the lines drawn through a few examples). Nevertheless I think that this is a very useful practice as all complicated objects can be broken down into simpler shapes.