Free Line & Ellipse Drill Sheet Generator

Printable drawing exercises, generated

These warm-ups are usually ruled by hand before they can be practised: a page of dots, a page of boxes, a page of funnels. That preparation is the dull part, and it is the same every time. Here the page is generated, so each sheet has figures you have not met, at lengths and angles you did not choose.

The pages are for drawing on. Print a pack, fill it, and print another. The exercises are named for what they are, and each page says in one line how to do it.

Ghosted lines and hatching

The ghosted lines exercise is a page of dot pairs: short, medium and long, at every angle. Rehearse the stroke in the air between two dots, then draw it once. The pairs never cross and are kept apart, so a stray line does not run into its neighbour. With Dots only, each pair carries a small number so you can tell which dot belongs to which.

The hatching boxes each state a direction and a spacing, such as 45° and 3 mm apart. The first three lines are shown, in light grey or as dots on the edge of the box, and the rest are yours to keep parallel.

An ellipse practice sheet with real degrees

A circle seen at an angle is an ellipse, and its degree says how open it is: 90° is the full circle, 10° is nearly a line. The short axis is the long axis times the sine of the degree, so a 30° ellipse is exactly half as wide as it is long. The Ellipses by degree page is an ellipse drawing practice worksheet: it prints one ellipse of each degree and a lane to repeat it in, with marks at the right width.

Ellipses in planes prints four-sided planes, and the ellipse to draw touches all four sides. The guide lines cross at the plane's centre and end where the ellipse touches. Ellipses in funnels prints pairs of curves with a centre line; the ellipses stand across the funnel, touch each other and keep one degree. The first plane and the first funnel on a page show the answer in light grey.

Curves, tapers and value scales

A C curve is drawn through three dots and an S curve through four, in one stroke. Pressure tapers are long strokes that begin heavy and lift to nothing, the reverse, or swell in the middle; the large dot is the heavy end. Hatching value scales print a strip of greys from light to dark with an empty box under each to hatch until it matches. The greys are evenly spaced in lightness, though a printer will shift them a little.

Printing it at the right size

Print at 100 %, or Actual size, not Fit to page. Then lay a ruler on the 100 mm rule at the foot of the sheet. If it reads 100 mm, the spacings stated on the hatching boxes are true as well. For more printed aids, see the printables for artists.

What it leaves out

It does not mark your work: the sheets are for the hand, and no photo is taken of the result. There are no boxes in perspective here. The printed greys depend on your printer. A sheet code brings back the same figures only with the same paper, size and exercise.