How To Draw Everything.

Sep 10

Salutations, friend -

Monster trucks, deciduous trees, axolotls - there are so many nifty things in the world. Each beautiful, unique, and complicated in their own way. How can one master the overwhelming panoply of stuff to draw? 🧐

Turns out, there is exactly one rule that allows you to draw anything, and everything 🤷‍♂️

All art concepts point back to this foremost principle. Consider this:

When you eat a bag of potato chips, do you eat the big chips on the top first, or do you eat the crumbs on the bottom first?

Saber-Tooth Tigers & Pareto’s Law.

Okay, so it’s like 15,000 years ago, and you’re a hunter gatherer. You’re all decked out in leopard skins. You’ve got the stone sharpened spear, there’s a bone through your hair; the whole deal - I promise this relates to art 👀

Now. There’s a silhouette in the trees. Is it your best homie… or is it going to eat you for dinner?

You’re not going to figure this out by what their eyelashes look like; or any other small detail. You’re going to look at the silhouette!

That’s because human vision processes big shapes first, then small details second.

Fast forward over a decamillennium later, and one Vilfred Pareto discovers this pervasive phenomenon: About 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (aptly, the 80/20 rule). Let’s apply this to drawing…

One Rule To Draw Them All.

If you want to efficiently draw anything, focus on contour.

That’s because the outline is doing the lion’s share (tiger’s share?) of the work.

TL;DR: You should spend most of your time mastering the big shapes (the 20% carrying 80% of the image). Afterward you might fine tune your understanding of the fun little details (80% doing 20%).