Good enough drawing for tech people

Posted on February 04, 2019 · 3 mins read · tagged with: #drawing #personal

As you probably noticed, all the images that I use recently as headers for my blog posts are drawn by hand. They are not perfect, but still, they enable me to practice a little bit and to spend time on drawing instead of searching for a perfect photo with permissive enough license. I’m not an expert in drawing but wanted to provide a few hints that you might incorporate on daily basis to get better at drawing.

You can draw

Take a pen, or better, a marker and draw a line, a triangle, a circle. I don’t mean sketching and doing countless moves to draw these shapes. Use just a single movement and move forward. No thinking or fixing. One move - one line. And please, don’t start the I can’t draw because… mantra.

Your drawings, your tools

You don’t start your day by asking What tools can I use today? Do I need to use vim? someone else in your office. You’ve got a preferred set of tools and you should use the very same approach for drawing. For instance, I stopped drawing on whiteboards. I use only paper and try to use it efficiently. Good markers for paper does not cost that much (for instance, take a look at a wesome Neuland offer) but will provide you with a tool, that you can get consistent results with. If you have paper and your marker, you cannot blame the tools, can you?

One drawing a day

There’s a lot of books showing how to draw. Probably, you can find one on your own. The most important aspect it to make it a routine. For instance, recently, I was able to draw a snail. Again, it’s not a perfect snail but one can tell that it’s a snail.

Why

The last but not least is answering the question why would one spend time on learning how to draw at all. I must admit that I’m a bit tired of blobs of substance that are drawn and loose context after 10 minutes, becoming rubbish at the end of the day. Drawing a header, numbering pages, drawing simple shapes is so much better than polluting surface of paper or a whiteboard with mini brain dumps. And it’s not that I’m not doing it at all. At least, I try to minimize it and make simpler drawings that mean something.

Next time, when I’ll be able to navigate conversation to make somebody mention a snail, I’ll be able to capture the context perfectly, not to mention, unlocking an achievement ;-)


Comments

Makes sense, have to try it. Thx for answer!

by Jakub at 2019-02-04 09:35:18 +0000

Why marker is better than a pen?

by Jakub at 2019-02-04 08:12:31 +0000

Different tool different purposes, I suppose.

by Szymon Kulec 'Scooletz' at 2019-02-04 09:29:21 +0000

I mean, marker works for a small sheet of paper, as well as on the big one. And it's really nice to be able to draw lines of different thickness with one tool.

by Szymon Kulec 'Scooletz' at 2019-02-04 09:30:51 +0000