Warm-up

Sub tuum praesidium, one of the oldest known prayers to the Blessed Virgin Mary is what I start with, followed by a short prayer to Saint Joseph. Thus protected, I sit down to the warm-up.

I begin by aligning the tip of the compass lead or pencil in the universal adapter with the compass needle. Personally, I like to have the pencil minimally under the needle tip to compensate for what will go into the paper and card, but some people prefer to have them perfectly aligned.

Those accustomed to practicing geometrical drawing will probably have their own favourite warm- up. If I was to suggest then the Vesica Piscis, also called Mandorla, division of a circle is a good construction as it only requires us to draw a horizontal line, a circle, a couple of arches and a vertical line, but without focus the result will be visibly inaccurate.

One can easily be tempted to skip the warm-up, especially if we are eager to get going with a drawing in progress. But my experience is that whenever I do skip it, the very thing I would be hurrying to will come out wrong and I will solely cause myself frustration. As handwriting is now a rarely performed act, most people have little hand-eye-brain practice of fine details. Our minds are often distracted and a warm-up will readjust our focus and hopefully get any hasty mistakes out onto scrap paper rather than our current drawing.

Anyone who is a complete beginner can start with just opening and closing the compass a number of times, use both the quick setting push-buttons and the centre wheel. Continue to marking freely some few dozen overlapping circles on a single A4 sheet of printer paper (both sides can be used for warm-ups). Change your radius, play around with the compass and get accustomed to holding it. Feel its weight in your hand and how the needle goes through the paper and into the card. When placing the needle on the paper use your non-dominant hand to help the dominant hand position the compass needle before piercing the paper. There are many tiny physical sensations involved when drawing with a compass and I found it helpful to recognise them and allow them to help me.