Another exercise related to drawing irregular objects is that of pretending that something is wrapped up in paper, such as your hand, and drawing the bumpy contour that results. The theory behind this is that it should be possible to describe a complex object in this way without getting too bogged down in detail. So this is the example that the author provides:
It's a pretty simple idea and the suggestion is that you should draw your hand, and its general shape, almost as if you're wearing a glove. So I followed the instructions by drawing an outline and sketching directional lines to provide a loose description of my hand. After this I added in the knuckle lines and here is the picture that I ended up with:
I'm not sure whether this has been a highly instructional exercise but it has reinforced my understanding of how relaxed you can be when sketching out the initial lines: their purpose is only to provide a scaffold for later detail and it's important to avoid become too attached to anything drawn this early on. I generally find that some of my preparatory lines really aren't in the right place after a while and it takes a concerted effort to ignore them and seek out a better path; I guess that we've always got to guard against laziness when drawing.