8 ideas on drawing & sketching — week of Mar 1

Instead of covering eight unrelated ideas I learned during the week as I have most weeks, I dove into drawing and sketching (specifically life drawing and figure drawing) this week.

I’m an absolute beginner at this, so anyone who’s studied drawing or sketching before will likely be familiar with most (if not all) of these.

A quote

The basic craft of drawing is about two things: you learn to control your hand and to see.

— Ralph Ammer, A Quick Beginner’s Guide to Drawing

Okay, I lied: two quotes.

Whenever we draw something, we ask ourselves painful questions. Such as, “Is this drawing good?” “Am I talented?” Or worst of all, “Is this art?”

No one would do that with language. No one would say, “That didn’t come out like a poem, I guess I shouldn’t speak.”

— Ralph Ammer, How Drawing Helps You Think (TEDxTUM)

Top 3 🏆

1. How to trick your brain to see what’s really there

We walk the world with a collection of heuristics — rules of thumb and mental models that we use to simplify what we observe. Otherwise, we would be overwhelmed by all the information around us and all…