Secrets of a Stapler

You know when you see that kid next to you doodling the Mona Lisa, while you’re sitting there drawing the 101th star that is still unsymmetrical and unsatisfying? And, you think to yourself, “I wish I could draw like that.” Guess what…you can! All you need is a pencil!

I think we need to seriously clarify this misconception that there are some who can and others who can’t. Look, y'all can do it...just some of you bother to try. When you see someone’s masterpiece, it would immensely flatter them to be called ‘gifted,’ but it’s not actually a gift—it’s just hard work and dedication.

Let’s use the coolest artist ever, Pablo Picasso, who is also one of my greatest inspirations. Art encompassed Picasso's life. His dad was a Spanish painter and art teacher, who gave Picasso formal art lessons since he was a mini-casso (like a mini Picasso!). He surpassed his father not because of  “God’s gift,” but because his passion and dedication brought him that far. He became educated in art, and it led to the coolest most revolutionary pieces that are still  revered, today.

Pablo Picasso's Guernica
NOTE: this is an example of cubism, which Picasso basically invented 

I think the reason people conclude they “just can’t do it” is that most that try to draw just give up. They see that their ‘drawing’ is resembling an amoeba rather than the object of interest. Say you want to draw a stapler—this may seem weird but I remember doodling a picture of a stapler in health class in 7^th grade—you pick up your pencil and you start drawing what you see. After three lines, you can see that this picture is doomed to failure, and you just scribble it out or make it an ‘abstract’— “which was your intention in the first place”…right?

Do you know why your stapler turned into whatever you made it? You probably don’t, which is one of the problems! I don’t want to start preaching, but you can’t really draw something as ‘complex’ as a stapler until you realize that it has perspective—like all three dimensional objects.

So because I was talking so much about doodling a stapler, I decided stop being all talk and just drew the stupid thing. And because I said earlier that all you need was a pencil, that was all I used. Luckily my pencil had an eraser because I made plenty of mistakes along the way. This 30 minute job (which included jamming to some Chris Brown, eating a banana, and a bathroom break), utilized a blunt pencil and some printer paper. 

I’m not saying pay to go to classes and waste your money and time on this, but if you really genuinely want to finally become satisfied with what you create on paper, maybe go through a few pictures on Google of drawings of staplers. Maybe there’s an instructional video on perspective and still life objects. Maybe you find a blog on art... oh wait...

The trick is not to aim for what you see, but what you want. Yeah, I can be deep. But what I mean is sometimes you have to trick your audience. Something might be at a strange angle, and you have to fake it so it looks right. You might have to change how a shadow looks if the light flattens the object. Exaggerate your lights and darks--I did so with my drawing above, to the best of my ability provided I had an HB pencil (really light pencil) and couldn't get it any darker. Depth is my favorite part of drawing. If you create depth, you create this third dimension. 

So, if all you took away from this post was some random stuff about staplers…then I failed, but if I have shown you through my rant that anybody who is willing can do art, then that’s a success on my part. 

...and for the record, all though I can tell that I have drawn a stapler (and hopefully you can too), there are still plenty of mistakes. The bottom line isn't even straight (I didn't have a ruler!), the shadow is outlined too dark, the holes on the bottom could have had more highlights (but I didnt have my tiny eraser!), some of the lines are streaky and unblended.... BUT IT'S OKAY. It's not ever going to be perfect, and you need to stop when you're satisfied. I was beyond satisfied to see that a blunt pencil and textureless paper could even produce a picture!