Animals Made from 13 Circles (2016)

I can't speak to this but I took a drawing class a long time ago. I'm not very good but it was a lot of drawing circles. When you see people freehand stuff it's kind of wild but that's not how people learn how to draw they're just very good at it from practice. Most of learning is drawing very basic shapes, usually circles, and erasing parts that don't make sense and continuing.

I have been practicing art a lot lately. You can draw just about anything using spheres, cubes, cylinders, and cones. You start off with the 2d versions.

> drawing very basic shapes, usually circles, and erasing parts that don't make sense

There's a hilarious Spongebob bit [0] where Squidward is teaching an art class, and he starts off in that exact manner of trying to draw a perfect circle, only to have Spongebob subvert the entire idea. The whole episode is artistic gold IMO.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTlpFEvmxdM

I do remember that. Sorry I can't find a better website but this is a similar joke.

https://www.reddit.com/r/restofthefuckingowl/comments/6f71jm...

I stopped after a few classes but I was amazed at how good I got in a short amount of time after learning how to break stuff down which isn't something I really thought about before. By all metrics I'm still a pretty terrible drawer but prior to that stick figures would have been challenging.

Drawing from circles, squares, triangles, etc. in art is called "construction" and is definitely a foundational technique. It really is amazing how much easier drawing becomes once it's understood (and practiced).

Another good resource for learning how to draw realistically is the book: "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". The premise is that your brain wants to take shortcuts and group/chunk things together on what they should look like, instead of what things actually look like. But even a rectangle in real life has non-right-angles because of perspective, etc.. And if you draw what you actually see, then the drawings come out correct. Some of the exercises are copying other drawings placed upside-down, so that you brain doesn't try to over-interpret things. I can't recommend this enough if you want to go from a beginner to something respectable in drawing abilities.

https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/d...

https://kk.org/cooltools/drawing-on-the-right-side-of-the-br...

I read the book and loved it (about 15 years ago). There’s no royal road to becoming an artist but lots of joy along the way. Whatever the path, enjoy it!

The origin of this is the “how to draw an owl” pic

https://imgur.com/how-i-feel-when-somebody-gives-me-advice-g...

Except The Tick was drawn in 1988, so has somewhat a prior art claim here.

True, I did some amateur vector art (in Illustrator) and you basically have to compose objects out of basic shapes. It is truly highly meditative.