Your Brain Has Been Drawing for You
Welcome back! Last time you gathered your budget kit and made your first marks. Today we're going to tackle the biggest reason people say "I can't draw". The surprise is that it has very little to do with your hand.
Let me ask you something. When you were a kid, how did you draw a house? A square, a triangle on top, a door and maybe a curl of smoke? And a person? A circle for the head, a stick body and a big U-shaped smile?
Those little pictures are symbols. They're quick, shorthand drawings your brain stored away years ago. They're great for saying "this is a house". They're terrible for showing what a house actually looks like.
The art teacher Betty Edwards wrote about this in her book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, first published in 1979. She called it the "tyranny of the symbol system". Her point was that we don't just draw with these symbols. We see with them too. Your brain glances at an eye, thinks "eye, got it", and hands your pencil the old lemon shape with a dot in the middle.
So the good news is this. Your hand isn't the problem. You just need to learn to switch off the shorthand and really look.
Warm-Up: The Eye Test (5 minutes)
Let's catch your brain in the act.
First, without looking at anything, draw an eye from memory. Don't think about it, just draw it. Done? I'm guessing it's a pointed lemon or football shape with a circle in the middle and maybe a few eyelashes sticking out like a fence.
Now grab a mirror, or look at a clear photo of someone's face. Look hard at one eye for a full minute before you draw anything. What do you notice?
The two corners probably aren't the same. One is often lower or rounder than the other. The upper lid is a thick curved band, not a thin line. The iris is partly hidden under the top lid, so it isn't a full circle at all. And the eyelashes? They mostly just look like a darker edge.
Draw what you see this time. Put your two eyes side by side. The first one is your symbol. The second one is the start of real seeing.
Thinking in Simple Shapes
So if we're not drawing symbols, what are we drawing? We're drawing shapes.
Here's an analogy. Think of a child's shape-sorter toy, with its circle, square and triangle blocks. Almost anything you'll ever draw can be roughed out with pieces like those. A lamp is a triangle sitting on a rectangle. A cat curled up asleep is a big oval with a small circle for the head. A slice of pizza is a triangle with a curve on one end.
These are flat shapes, the outlines you'd get if the object were a cardboard cut-out. We're not worrying about 3D form or shading yet. We're just asking: what's the simplest shape this part fits into?
A handy trick is to squint. When you half-close your eyes, small details blur away and the big shapes stand out. Try it now on anything near you.
Main Exercise: The Shape Mug (15–20 minutes)
Find a mug and put it on a table about an arm's length away. Sit so you see it a little from the side, with the handle showing. Now let's go step by step.
- Look before you draw. Spend a full minute just looking. Squint. What's the biggest shape? For most mugs it's a tall or wide rectangle.
- Draw the main shape lightly. Use soft, light marks, as you practised last time. Sketch that big rectangle.
- Find the top. Look at the rim. Is it a straight line? Almost certainly not. From where you're sitting it's a squashed oval. Draw the oval shape you actually see, even if your brain is shouting "but mugs are round!"
- Find the bottom. The bottom edge usually curves too, following the oval at the top. Check it and draw the curve you see.
- Add the handle. Squint again. The handle might be a C-shape, a half-circle or a squashed loop. Draw that shape against the side of the mug.
- Only now, add details. A logo, a chip on the rim, a stripe. Each one is just another small shape.
Notice what you didn't do. You didn't draw "a mug". You drew a rectangle, two ovals and a loop that happen to add up to a mug.
Checking Your Drawing, One Shape at a Time
Now let's check your work. Don't ask "does this look good?" That question just wakes up your inner critic. Instead, go through the shapes one by one.
Look at the real rim, then at your drawn rim. Is your oval as thin, or as fat, as the real one? Look at the real handle, then at yours. Is it the same kind of shape? Compare the body of the mug. Is your rectangle taller or wider than the real one?
When you spot a difference, that's not failure. It's a clue. Often it's where a symbol sneaked back in, like a perfectly round rim that should have been an oval. Fix that one shape and move on to the next.
Key Takeaways
- Symbols are the stored shorthand drawings your brain reaches for, like a lemon-shaped eye or a U-shaped smile.
- Betty Edwards called this the "tyranny of the symbol system". It affects how we see as well as how we draw.
- Break objects into simple flat shapes such as circles, ovals, rectangles and triangles. Start with the biggest shape first.
- Squint to blur the details so the big shapes stand out.
- Look longer than you draw, and draw the shape you see, not the shape you know.
- Check your drawing by comparing one shape at a time against the real object.