Drawing a candy is very simple. It's a rectangular middle with rounded edges and two twisted wrapper tails.

On the middle, folds remain from the twisting.

Drawing a spool is very simple. A big cylinder with a smaller cylinder sticking out on both sides.

To show the wound thread, you can add hatching, or just draw a sticking-out tip.

The hardest part about the mug is the handle. If you make it three-dimensional, conveying the shape isn't easy.

Everything else won't be a problem: an oval on top, two lines going down, and half an oval at the bottom.

An ashtray is a plate with notches for cigarettes.

There are two ways to draw it: draw the plate and then erase the notches on it — or first draw the notches and then draw the plate around them.

Use whichever one is more convenient for you.

Carrot is triangular, orange, and striped. It has a rounded top from which a bunch of leaves sticks out.

Why don't we draw an ogre?

He's big, strong, and angular.

First let's draw the lip, with the fangs sticking out from under it. Below it — a heavy chin, above it — a nose, eyes under an angry brow, ears, and a bald crown.

Next — the body, arms, and legs. Here you just keep trying until it works out. The main tip — try to make them shorter, to boost the ogre's stockiness.

We need a metaphor for the word flimsy. A house of cards works great.

We start drawing lines: one on top, two in the middle, three at the bottom.

Next we connect the lines so they form cards.

All that's left is to draw the suits and color in the backs.

For a starfish we'll need some serious preparation. If you have nothing to erase with, just do the listed steps mentally.

1. Place a dot in the center and five dots at equal distance around it. Ideally, the distances between two neighboring dots around the central one should be the same.
2. Connect the side dots to the central one.
3. Place a dot between the lines at an equal small distance from the central one.

That's it for the preparation. If you did this in your head — hopefully it worked out for you.

All that's left is to connect the far dots to the near ones with a slightly curved line, and you get a star. After that, all the auxiliary dots and lines can be erased (or forgotten).

For beauty, you can add some patterns.

Overall, you could just draw a rectangle, say it's Charlie Chaplin's mustache, and call it a day. However, the more dashing a mustache we draw, the easier it will be to tell that it's a mustache.

Start with the left side of the mustache, then add an almost identical one on the right. If you feel like it, add shading or color. And there you have a mustache.

Let's start with the sausage. The top part will be visible, but the bottom won't, so let's draw only the top.

Then the bottom part of the bun, the top part of the bun, and sauce to taste.

Let's start by drawing a plate. Then we'll add a sheet of nori, a marinated egg, neatly sliced pieces of meat, noodles, and pour broth over everything.

The result will be ramen.

Let’s start drawing the bell with symmetrical arcs of its sides. Then add the handle on top, and at the bottom— the rounded edge and the protruding clapper.

I'm gonna tell you my favorite food It's perfect after a show I wanna tell you about amazing food I can eat it late at night

Ramen noodles charge the power Ramen noodles tomorrow again

In drawing, the main thing is to understand the pattern: horizontal strokes alternate with vertical ones, and the curves of the strokes change as well.

Fill a cube with such strokes — and you get a brick of noodles.

“Awl” goes back to Old English æl / awel, meaning a pointed tool for making holes.

We'll start by drawing the handle. It looks like a cylinder, narrowing toward one side to make it more comfortable to hold. From the narrow side comes the blade, and to make it hold better, there's a metal ring around the base.

This is the fifth version of the robot for my son Ivan's birthday cake. For his first birthday, I drew a little robot, and now every year the robot grows along with him.

Also checkout MK IV.

Cigarettes look cool in movies. The smoke and all that. The trouble is, every year they kill far more people than wars, murders, and accidents combined. Creepy.

If there were some thing that let you blow smoke beautifully but had no other effect whatsoever, I might give smoking a try.

And drawing a cigarette is easy — a cylinder, the filter separated by an arc, and a wisp of smoke from the tip.

Capybara is a giant hamster from America that loves to swim.

The shape of its head, if you look at it from the side, is very rectangular. Its body is fluffy, but its paws are not.

A paper clip is, at first glance, a simple thing. A piece of wire, bent three times.

But you can't bend wire that evenly by hand. It took the Industrial Revolution and machinery to make it possible to create a paper clip. And yet its design hasn't changed since it was first made.

When drawing, the key is to turn at the right places. It took me three tries to get it.

Remember LITTLE MAX 1, the road warrior with enhanced smallness? A whole year has passed.

Say hello to: LITTLE MAX 2!

A neuron is a device for processing information. It receives a bunch of signals through dendrites, and if it decides there are enough of them, it passes them on through the axon. Nothing complicated. But if you connect them into a really large crowd, they can send that signal in the right direction and transform it in a way that strongly resembles intelligence.

We'll start drawing with an oval nucleus.

Around it, we'll draw a body with a crown of dendrites that look like pointed branches.

We'll add a long axon tail covered with ovals of the myelin sheath. It ends in a tree of projections that resemble branches with flat tips.

The result is a quite recognizable neuron.

Hammer consists of a head and a handle.

The head has two sides — one for driving nails in, and the other for pulling them out.

The handle has only one purpose, so drawing it is even simpler.

Today we're going to draw a socket, and to keep things interesting, we'll draw four of them right away, plus the plugs to go with them.

Let's start with a regular electrical outlet. Mine currently looks like this: two contact holes in the center, and grounding at the top and bottom. You can plug in the cord either way. Nothing unusual.

Next up is USB Type-A. It's famous for being impossible to insert the right way on the first try. Either the second time, or the third.

Now — USB Type-C. It's great in every way. Works for everything, and you can plug it in either side. Really, it has only one drawback — all the other USB connector standards.

And finally — jack. It has no sides at all, you can plug it in any way you want. The one downside is that it takes up a lot of space inside the device because it's long. I once had a phone with a 2.5 mm jack (which is 1 mm smaller than the usual one). I spent a year looking for headphones for it and never found any. Since then I've been using wireless ones.

Earlier, cameras used to shoot on film, now they shoot on a sensor, but that doesn't change the essence.

You need a hole for the light to come through, covered by a lens, a viewfinder, a few buttons, and a spot for a flash on top. Nothing complicated: just circles, rectangles, and lines.

The anvil is needed to shape hot metal, so it has different surfaces: a flat face and a curved horn. We will start drawing with those. Then we will add the base and the legs. And that is it, nothing complicated.

A complete list of what a component's styles have access to.

A collection of UI tweaks unlocked by new CSS features.

About using vector graphics for animation.

A performance featuring an oscilloscope, lasers, and a fire extinguisher. Turning an image into sound and back.

About how, to learn something new, you first have to let go of the old.

About layouts beyond just Pinterest-style masonry.

About what you can do in CSS now and how to pair it with JS so the code stays readable.

A customisable select was already needed back in '93. And now, years later, we almost have it.

A clear guide at the start and wild time-travel tricks at the end.

A dark theme does not suit everyone. A light theme does not suit everyone either. You need both.

An x86 emulator in pure CSS.

An emulator!
x86!
In pure CSS!!!

About how fun and interesting it is to build a browser from scratch by following the specs.

A talk about how color spaces are similar to plumbing faucets, and how to learn to change a color's hue while preserving its brightness and saturation.

A talk about how color spaces are similar to plumbing faucets, and how to learn to change a color's hue while preserving its brightness and saturation.

In a classic speedboat, the engine is housed inside the hull rather than hanging off the back. This approach comes with a lot of complications, but it looks better, in my opinion.

The easiest view to draw is from above. Let's start with the hull: two symmetrical curved lines — the sides. The transom is angled, so it's visible.

Next, let's add some details: a windshield, a seat, and a steering wheel.

You can also add fins at the stern.

Vacation, for me, is associated with palm trees on the seashore and people chilling in them, watching the sunset. Today I started wondering why that is, since most of my actual vacations featured neither palm trees nor the sea.

After spending fifteen minutes digging through my memory, I figured out that it's a frame from a Soviet cartoon I watched as a kid. That's what vacation looks like in my head.

Let's start with the palm trees. Chaotically hanging leaves, coconuts beneath them, and below the coconuts — a slightly curved trunk. On the other side — another palm tree, just the same.

Next — the lounge chairs. Two crossed sticks. A little higher and to the right — two more sticks, just like those. A piece of fabric stretched between them. Let's add one more — mirrored.

That's it. Vacation is ready.

Rocks are easy to draw. The beauty of it is that every rock you draw turns out unique.

Start with a rough, angular shape. Add a few facets along the edges and a couple of jagged ridges inside. All that's left is to shade the facets — and the rock is done.

The hardest part of drawing a fan is making the blades the same size. The simpler their shape, the easier it is to repeat them.

Draw a circle. Around it, add three, four, five, or as many blades as you like, spaced evenly apart. Behind them, draw a stand or the fan's body.

We’ll start drawing the browser with an empty rectangle.

Despite the whims of design and fashion, in 2026 you can still recognize a browser by the address bar and the back/forward buttons. Let’s add them to the rectangle.

These days a site without an s after http looks suspicious at the very least, and every browser highlights that somehow—usually with a shield or a padlock. This icon next to the address means the site is running over https, which means everything you send it and everything it sends back to you is encrypted, and that’s more or less protected. Pay attention to it: an encrypted connection is the key to healthy web surfing.

Next you can add window controls to taste and a scrollbar on the right for solidity.

You can draw any site inside the browser. I drew my little blog. In troubled times, a good old separate website with RSS will stay accessible a bit longer than everything else. Save the link for yourself if you like it. Good luck to you and safe internets.

The bottle is easy to recognize by its shape. Adding a highlight will make it look even better.

In our case, the bottle has a metal cap. Just before the cap, at the neck, there is a small thickening. The cap itself resembles a narrow trapezoid with hatching connected at the bottom.

The most recognizable image of an astronaut is the spacesuit for extravehicular activity. It's the kind of thing that looks more like a vehicle than clothing: with a rigid frame, a cooling loop, and a flashlight. That's what we're going to draw.

First — the helmet. It's rigidly fixed to the torso, and the astronaut's head moves inside it, which is why the helmet has a huge visor protected from the sun.

Next — the cuirass, to which the arms and the lower part of the torso are attached. And on the back — a massive box housing the life support system and other useful things.

Doesn't look very comfortable, but out in open space, you simply can't do without all of it.

Today we’re drawing a wall. What makes a wall recognizable? Of course, bricks. To make the wall sturdy, the bricks are laid in a staggered pattern. We’ll do the same.

First, we’ll draw a rectangular wall. Add a concrete trim on top. Then divide the wall with horizontal lines. Split the first row into individual bricks with vertical lines. On the next row, do the same, but shift it by half a brick. This is how you need to divide the entire wall into bricks.

All that’s left is to add the shadow from the trim — and the wall is ready.

A modern refrigerator in a drawing is hard to tell apart from a wardrobe, so we will be drawing a rounded retro-style refrigerator.

We will start with the door — it is a rectangle with rounded corners. Then we will add some depth: the upper part of the back wall will also be rounded, while the lower part will be straight.

All that is left is to add the handles and divide the refrigerator and freezer compartment doors.

A spider has a round cephalothorax with eyes, from which eight legs with small claws at the tips grow. At the front there are also chelicerae and pedipalps (front legs), and at the back there is an abdomen.

I start drawing with the cephalothorax, then mark the positions for the legs. Next comes the hardest part: correctly conveying the shape and length of the legs. All that remains is to draw the abdomen.

Cucumber differs from a regular elongated oval only by its bumps and little tail.

It also has stripes, but they are only noticeable near the tips.

Ordinary clover has three leaves. But everyone knows that the fourth leaf brings luck, so we'll draw a four-leaf clover.

The easiest way is to draw a thin diagonal cross, and then around each line – an elongated heart. Then draw a stem at the bottom.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day to everyone!

A magnet has two poles – north and south. If you cut a magnet in half, each piece will also have two poles: north and south. To bring the poles closer together and make the magnet attract more strongly to metal, it's bent into a horseshoe shape. In permanent magnets, the north pole is usually painted blue, and the south pole is painted red.

And we're also flying through space on a giant magnet, which is why a compass works. Its needle is attracted to Earth's poles. Though opposite poles attract, so it turns out that the magnetic north pole is located in the south.

And drawing it is simple. Start with the letter U. Divide it with a line in the middle. Add volume and color.

Let’s start drawing the croissant from the central part. It’s a symmetrical trapezoid with rounded edges.

From the center, curved little “ears” extend to both sides, and from them — smaller “ears.”

A real croissant is never perfectly symmetrical, so if the “ears” end up slightly different in shape — that’s even good.

Today we're drawing cheese. Not every cheese has holes, but it's precisely the holes that easily transform an unknown chunk of something into a chunk of cheese, so we'll draw cheese with holes.

To start, we'll need a parallelogram (a skewed rectangle) with holes already made in it.

On top of it we'll draw a triangle where one of the sides is rounded.

All that remains is to add holes: first we'll outline those we made in the parallelogram, then add a few more in the free spaces.

We can also add shadow to one of the cheese edges, and darker shadow into the holes.

A fire extinguisher consists of a body, a shut-off and start device, and a sprayer. There are different types of fire extinguishers, but what makes them recognizable is the combination of these parts.

Let’s start with the body. It’s a tall cylinder, red, if you have something to paint it with. On top there’s the lever and handle of the shut-off and start device, which you need to squeeze to begin extinguishing. A tube comes out of them. On carbon dioxide extinguishers, there’s also a horn nozzle at the end.

I start drawing a basket with a small circle flattened at the bottom. Then I draw the handle around the top with a line, and the body of the basket at the bottom.

To make the basket look woven, you need to shade the handle with diagonal lines and the body with horizontal ones, and then insert narrow vertical segments between the horizontal lines in a checkerboard pattern so they’re arranged roughly like bricks, only narrower.

To draw a recognizable chain, two or three links are enough, but if you wish, you can draw more.

First, draw rounded rectangles a short distance from each other, then connect them on the sides with half-ovals of the same thickness.

You can also add shadows and highlights.

The cloud is flat on the bottom and fluffy on top. It's quite simple to draw — just in two steps.

First we draw a straight line.

Then on top we add several semicircles that slightly overlap each other.

You can also add a bit of shading.

To draw a bowling pin, you need to create a symmetrical silhouette and add a couple of highlights. Nothing complicated.

A puzzle piece has four sides. Each of them can be either flat, convex, or concave.

There cannot be more than two flat sides, so we'll discard those right away.

Pieces with two flat sides can be of three types: convex-convex, concave-convex, and concave-concave.

We'll replace one of the flat sides in turn with convex and concave. This gives us six more pieces.

Now for these six, we'll replace the last flat side with convex and concave. It seems pieces with all convex and all concave sides don't exist, so we'll remove those. This gives us ten.

In total, I got nineteen types of pieces. Hello Stephen King.

When you're drawing, note that the edges of a convex side are slightly concave, and those of a concave side are, conversely, slightly convex. This is needed so there's more room for holes inside the piece.

I have another hobby besides sketches – video games. This year I'm planning to draw a big sketch about gaming console generations. Today, as an experiment, let's draw PlayStation.

Everything as usual – circles and rectangles. Sony has a recognizable shape, so it's easy to guess even without the logo and text.

Happy World Sketchnote Day! Have a nice sketches this year!

Drawing an air balloon is quite simple.

An elongated circle, a knot at the bottom and a string.

To add volume, you can also add highlights.

#52

A wheel is a complicated thing. There's a rim, a tire, the mount, and there may also be an inner tube inside.

But at the same time it's pretty easy to draw.

Start with the rim and mark the lines of the inner and outer edge on it. Then connect them with spokes and add the mounting circles in the middle.

And draw the tire on the outside. You can add a tread pattern and lettering to the tire to make it look more interesting.

52 HIT C-C-COMBO!!! 🎄

Salt, like any other loose materials, looks like simple triangles in a sketch. To add volume, make the bottom line rounded.

Salt comes in different sizes: from fine to very coarse. You can convey this in a sketch too. For fine salt — straight lines, for coarse — jagged ones.

If you add a shadow, the shadow line will be just as uneven as the edges of the heap itself. And a few small crumbs around it will make it look more natural.

Blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong sustained winds and low visibility.

In a blizzard, visibility is about the same as in a very thick fog because the snow above the ground creates a dense curtain, and you can’t see a damn thing. Besides, if the wind is in your face, you can’t see either because it’s very hard to open your eyes.

The simplest way to depict a blizzard is to draw someone who’s standing up to it.

To figure out the pose, I first drew a stick figure with a round head—just to see how he walks against the wind and how he covers his face with his hand.

Then I started repeating the same figure but in more detail, starting with the legs so it’s clear he’s walking with difficulty. Next, I added a jacket and a scarf streaming in the wind, along with a hand shielding his face from the wind. Tracks from felt boots in the snow also add to the atmosphere.

After the person turned out well, all that’s left is to add the wind and snowflakes.

#49

Tulle is a sheer mesh fabric. It's usually hung over windows.

To draw such a fabric, draw a rectangle and hatch it horizontally and vertically.

And to show that the fabric is sheer, you can put some shape behind it.

Kissel is a drink thickened with starch. You can make it from any liquid: from compote, juice, or even cocoa. But making it well is not easy.

If you don’t whisk that starch smooth in cold water, your kissel won’t thicken.

If you half‑mix it or leave a single lump, your kissel won’t thicken.

If you let it come to a rolling boil, your kissel won’t thicken.

In fact, you’re gonna have to work very hard if you want that kissel just right.

Now, do you understand everything I’ve just said? ’Cause if you don’t, your kissel won’t thicken.

Pain is a complicated thing. To make life easier, let’s not consider abstract pain, like the pain of watching the latest Star Wars movies. Instead, let’s focus on a specific kind of pain — getting your finger hit with a hammer.

So, after a hammer hits your finger, a lot of stuff happens. Hard to believe, because it happens very fast.

It all starts with the pain being turned into an electrical signal in the finger that got whacked by the hammer.

After that, the signal is sent to the spinal cord, which passes it along and, along the way, decides to yank the hand back just in case. This happens even before we notice that it hurts.

Then the pain signal slowly reaches the brain, and we start to notice that it hurts. That’s when the screaming begins.

A moth looks a lot like a butterfly: a bit chubbier body, slightly smaller wings, slightly duller colors, and a bit worse PR. And in Hollow Knight, the final boss is a moth too.

To draw one, start with a circle — that’s the base. From it, a triangular body goes down, a head with stylish antennas goes up, and wings stretch out to the sides.

In beans, there is nothing complicated at all.

It's just a semicircle with a concave side, on which the mark of attachment to the pod is visible.

And also, the pod is the green thing inside which the beans grow.

Log lies lengthwise, layered lumber, lined lavishly, looped lines linger.

The most difficult part of a deer is, of course, the antlers. The deer itself looks more like a horse, just with a head of a slightly different shape. But the antlers—they're really something!

First, they have prongs that stick forward. Then long prongs that stick backward. And from these, smaller prongs stick out in different directions. I figured it out with great difficulty. Try first to sketch them with simple lines. This will make it easier to understand the form.

Drawing a bandage is very easy. It's a rectangle with rounded edges, inside which is another rectangle.

A bandage is needed to cover small wounds, and therefore it has holes so that the skin underneath can breathe.

To draw a bandage, you need to draw two parallel lines, connect them with arcs, add a rectangle inside, and draw a pattern of perforation dots on it.

Let's look at what a linden tree consists of.

If you examine the picture, you can see the trunk. Branches extend from it, and around each branch there's a fluffy cloud of leaves. To draw a tree, you need to replicate this structure.

You can practice by drawing a trunk with branches, outlining the branches with leaves, and doing this several times. Later, if you don't have time to draw and erase the trunk, you can try the following trick: start with a small stump protruding at the bottom. Then draw clusters of leaves on top as if they're surrounding branches. You don't need to draw the actual branches anymore.

For aesthetic appeal, you can leave a few gaps between the clusters to make the trunk visible.

Did you also think that Ratatouille is a mouse from the cartoon? Well, no.

It's a traditional vegetable dish from Provençal cuisine made with bell peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, and zucchini.

I can't eat that today, even though I really want to.

Let's start drawing with a plate, in which we'll arrange colorful slices in a circle.

To draw an observatory, you should start with the telescope, which is the most important part. Around it is the roof, and beneath the roof is the observatory building.

Can dragons fly without magic? Let's try to figure it out.

I found a random formula on the internet for calculating bird wing area based on body mass: S≈0.15⋅m^2/3. A dragon, even the smallest one, should weigh no less than a horse. Otherwise, how could it carry off a princess or at least a donkey? The average weight of a horse is 500 kg. If we plug this into the formula, we get approximately 12 square meters of wings, which should be about 6 times larger than the size of the dragon itself. And here we have problems. First, this formula is for birds, and dragons most likely don't have feathers, hollow bones, and other adaptations that birds have developed to be lighter. Second, wings of this size would significantly affect the mass themselves. The catch is that as wing size increases, mass grows faster than lift. So it turns out that without magic, dragons can fly only backwards using jet propulsion from their mouths; wings alone wouldn't be enough for them.

But I'm getting distracted.

We'll start drawing it with the most difficult part—the wing. Try to convey the shape of an extended S with a very long top. Then we'll add the inner part of the membranous wing to it.

When the wing starts to take shape, you can try to draw the dragon's body and the second wing. After that, all that remains is to add details.

The harvester is an amazingly complex and multifunctional machine. The blade cuts the stems, then they are captured by the feeder, go inside, where the grains are separated from the stems, and all this happens inside the harvester, while only cleaned grain comes out.

I thought it would be easier to draw the harvester from the front view. So I first drew the cutter and feeder, then added the wheels and the harvester body behind it, and some details.

If you study photos of a harvester, you can see what it has. Some kind of cabin, some kind of ladder to get into the cabin, a grain container on top. If you arrange all this somehow, you get a recognizable image.

Today I attended Mike Rowdy's webinar titled "Reflective Travel Sketchnotes." The idea is that during travel, it's not always possible to sit down at the end of each day and draw a sketch. Either because the day was very intense, or because you now have two children.

In this case, you can take photos, make text notes, or record something on your voice recorder at the end of the day to capture moments that can later be transferred into a sketch.

The second part was about step-by-step instructions and an example of how to create a travel sketch. This, by the way, turned out to be quite similar to how I made my own travel sketches.

Sketchnote for the presentation by Cassie Evans, instead of which she made a game.

Sketchnote for the talk about how to benefit from research by Kevin Hawkins.

Sketchnote for Manuel Matuzović's talk about his research on modern CSS capabilities.

Sketchnote for Oliver Reichenstein's talk about how the mouse interferes with thinking, and the world resembles the matrix without kung-fu.

Sketchnote for Scott Jehl's talk about how to fit a waterfall into a bottle.

My sketchnote for the first talk of the second day of Smashing Conf. Gemma O'Brien talked about her research on the flow state.

Sketchnote from Matthias Ott's talk about how the web is not paper. The web is made of much more interesting materials. If you play with them a little, you can feel it.

Sketchnote with a story about how to feel the value of accessibility by Kardo Ayoub.

Sketchnote for a talk about CSS repair and refactoring by Ana Rodrigues.

Sketchnote for Nick Desbarats' talk, which explains what makes a good dashboard different from a Christmas tree.

Sketchnote for the wonderful, kind talk by Emily Anderson about how thoughtless notifications can cause harm.

Sketchnote for Brad Frost's talk about how to stop making your own datepicker and be like Phil Collins at Smashing Conf.

The bottom part of all chess pieces is very similar. One might say identical. Let's draw the bottom part separately. It looks like a layered cake made of different pancakes.

Now, using this base, we'll draw each of the pieces.

The simplest is the pawn. It has a concave stem with a ball on top.

The bishop isn't much more complex. Basically like a pawn, but with a spike on top instead of a ball.

Next in complexity is the king. It's large. It has a cross on top of its ball.

The queen is slightly more complex. The wavy edges of the crown are quite intricate.

The rook looks simple and angular, but drawing the tower is difficult, especially in three dimensions.

And the most challenging (if you, like me, can't draw horses) is the knight. I'll remind you, a horse without a mane looks like a dinosaur. So draw a dinosaur and add a mane to it.

And there we have our chess set.

SmashingConf is just a week away! Looking forward to the trip. And I'll also be giving a small talk with pictures at the Jam Session.

Thanks to recent events, we now all know exactly what a virus looks like. Let's draw it.

We'll start with an imaginary circle. Or a circle drawn in pencil, because we'll need to erase parts later. Around this circle, let's draw several small circles and a few more inside.

The next step will be to draw legs from these circles pointing toward the center of the circle. The farther a small circle is from the center, the longer its leg should be. And each leg should be wider at the base than at the top.

Now, if your circle was drawn in pencil, erase the lines that are overlapped by the legs. If you had an imaginary circle, draw in the lines that form the circle.

Finally, add legs positioned at the back of the circle. That means drawing a few more circles with legs that connect to the main circle.

Together, these legs form a crown-like structure around the circle, which is why this virus is called a coronavirus.

Between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit. The teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.

Let's start drawing it from the lid. This is the easiest way to maintain proportions, and nothing will need to be erased.

The second step is to draw the bulbous body of the teapot under the lid. From the lid, the line goes slightly down, and then symmetrically follows an oval shape to the opposite side of the lid.

All that remains is to add the handle, spout, and base.

Today we're drawing a kite. It's not difficult to draw, but there are some tricks.

Let's start with the frame. The frame is a cross, but since the kite is flying, its lines are slightly curved from the wind.

The skin of the kite is stretched over the cross, its edges are also slightly curved inward.

A ribbon flutters at the back as a tail. You can also add shadows and seams for beauty.

Today we are drawing a drum. A drum consists of two membranes stretched over a rigid frame.

Let's draw an oval, and slightly below it - a half-oval. We'll connect the upper and lower ovals with braces. In the upper oval, let's add some depth by drawing an inner wall. We now have a drum.

This is the fourth version of the robot for my son Ivan's birthday cake. For his first birthday, I drew a little robot, and now every year the robot grows along with him.

The faucet consists of a tube, a handle, and a mounting. At least, the faucet that we will be drawing.

The handle fits into a special part that contains the water-shutoff mechanism, so there is a thickening at the bottom, in the place of the faucet located under the handle.

I start drawing the faucet with the tube, with a place for the handle on top and a thickening at the bottom. Then I'll draw the handle on top, the wall mounting, and the tip of the faucet. It turns out to be quite simple.

Today we'll be drawing a stepladder. The task turned out to be unexpectedly difficult, so get ready. To make the ladder look good, we need to draw it in projection. And to avoid erasing extra lines, let's try to do this in layers.

First, we need six points that we'll use as references for our drawing. Imagine a horizontal line. Place a point at a small distance above the line. Put the next point to the right of the first one, with its distance from the line being twice as much. We now have our first pair of points. We need two more pairs.

Place the second pair of points to the right of the first pair and one "unit" lower (the third point will lie on the line, and the fourth will be at the same distance from the line as the first point).

The third pair of points will be significantly higher vertically than the first two pairs and exactly between them horizontally. It should look like the illustration.

Now let's start drawing the layers. For the left points of each pair, draw a horizontal line. Then connect the ends of the lower lines to the upper one. We've created a triangular structure on the front layer.

Now let's draw the steps. Let's start with the top one. Draw a horizontal line for the second point from the upper pair and connect its ends to the first upper horizontal line. We've created a step. Now draw several more similar steps along each side of the ladder. This will be the middle layer.

The final step is to draw the back, far part of the stepladder. To do this, simply connect the edges of the steps with lines and then extend them down to the upper points of the lower pairs.

And there we have a rather nice and neat ladder. If you want to make it simpler, you can avoid adding width to the steps. This will look fine in a small picture.

A skateboard is a board with wheels that has a small upward curve at the beginning and end. The curve is the most difficult part of drawing a skateboard.

First, I draw two parallel lines, then add curves on both sides, and at the bottom I draw wheels, and above the wheel mounts I add four holes for bolts. That's it, the skateboard is ready.

Sketches can be used for various things.

For example, to order a birthday cake.

And today is exactly that day, so please welcome: LITTLE MAX 1, road warrior with enhanced smallness.

The satellite dish, also known as a parabolic antenna, consists of a reflector and a feed horn. The reflector receives satellite signals and reflects them onto the feed horn, which hangs in front of it on supports. From the feed horn, the signal is sent for processing.

Satellite antennas come in movable and stationary types. Stationary ones capture signals from satellites in geostationary orbit. These satellites rotate around Earth at the same speed as Earth itself rotates. As a result, they appear to hang in the same place all the time, as if fixed on a very long pole.

To draw a satellite antenna, you need to draw a large dish, draw the feed horn in front of it, and add the support on which it stands.

A toothbrush consists of bristles and a handle. I start drawing the brush with the bristles because it's easier to maintain proportions this way.

Around the bristles is the head of the brush, from which the handle extends downward with an ergonomic curve.

The bristles are attached to the handle in tufts, which form a recognizable pattern on the cleaning surface.

Lungs are mainly needed to consume oxygen from the air.

They consist of roughly equal parts, from which two tubes - bronchi - extend and join into one trachea, through which air enters the lungs.

If anatomical accuracy is desired, you can draw an indentation for the heart in the right lung.

A life ring is needed so that a person who has fallen overboard doesn't sink due to the weight of wet clothes while being rescued.

Nowadays they are usually made of foam, but previously they were made of cork. Modern life rings weigh 2-3 kilograms (5 - 8 pounds), although larger ones can weigh 4 or even 5 (9 - 11 pounds). Better not to get hit on the head with one, otherwise there will be no one to rescue.

Drawing it is very simple: an outer circle, an inner circle, a rope for easier grip, and bright colors for good visibility.

#3

The third lecture of the "Get Everything Done" course. About what motivation is, how it helps, and what to do when it doesn't.

The turbocharger increases internal combustion engine power in a rather clever way. The impeller is rotated by exhaust gas from burning fuel, and it pumps air into the engine under pressure.

As a result, more air enters the engine, meaning more fuel can be burned, so with the same engine displacement, you can get greater power.

To draw a turbocharger, you need to imagine how it works. Start with the outer shape in the form of a snail shell. Then inside, a circle with an impeller. All that remains is to add the intake, exhaust, and mountings.

#2

The second lecture of "Get Everything Done". About how everything here isn't literally everything, but only what's really worth getting done.

A visa is such a tricky thing, without which some humanoid cannot visit certain places.

I once had a case when I was going to a conference in Europe, and I had everything ready except for the visa. And I got my visa just one day before the conference. It was quite nerve-wracking.

A visa is a sticker on a passport page, so to draw it, we'll first draw a passport. Then we'll draw the sticker itself, add a photo, description, codes, and a stamp to it. And so that the second page of the passport isn't empty, we'll add entry and exit stamps from the country.

A captivating story about the struggle of the free web against corporations, filled with intrigue and sarcasm.

IT have a greater impact on the environment than airplanes. This is a talk with recommendations that should be followed to reduce this impact.

Talk about how to renovate a house and how to convince a product manager to clean up CSS.

Demonstration of computer chains operation using CSS selectors for calculations. An amusing and instructive talk in its own way.

A talk about a wonderful bright future in which, to change the appearance of HTML controls, there will be no need for strange workarounds with hiding, crooked selectors, and magic. It will simply be necessary to reset their state to the basic one, and then add a few styles.

A live example of how dynamic and adaptive a layout can be when using modern CSS and HTML capabilities. Spoiler: so much so that one could say it's already a smart layout.

What you need to know about scope in CSS? Any CSS selector is already a scope. But now there are much more interesting possibilities for scope management: donut scope, proximity, and other wonders of the @scope directive.

However, the best approach is still using unique class names.

A talk about how much routine work we do over and over again, time after time, to ensure that company identities are reflected in their websites and applications. And about how to reduce the amount of repetitive work by using a design system based on design tokens.

A deep talk about the challenges faced by specification creators. Tasks that were easily solved for static printing on paper and in books are not so easily solved in the dynamic world of the web, especially when nobody needs their solution.

Talk about the amazing things you can do with HTML select, using CSS and features invented in Open UI. From a styled control to a basket of dumplings or an item picker from Monster Hunter.

Magnificent demo with a bunch of examples implementing page transitions from state to state. Using CSS only, you can create a very dynamic interface.

Talk on how mixins and functions transform, migrating from SASS to CSS, acquiring new features related to cascade.

A curious talk suggests looking at CSS through the lens of Chinese philosophy: not rigidly controlling the layout, but allowing it to flow freely, like water, flexibly adapting to its surroundings.

Talk about what can be done with scroll using only CSS. Cards, navigation, even Nintendo Switch interface.

Also, the Ultimate Scroller recipe.

#1

The first lecture of the "Get Everything Done" course, just for me, since I didn't get anything done this week 💔.

Here you have to be extremely careful. I already know a lot about Time Management. Because what I know doesn't help me at all. What helps is what I use.

It turns out that drawing a fingerprint is almost as complex as drawing a brain. This time we'll also use a template that we'll erase later.

A fingerprint is a unique pattern created by skin ridges, which looks quite fractal. It consists of lines of approximately equal thickness that spiral in circles or curve gently.

To draw a fingerprint, we'll take a semicircular shape that roughly resembles the shape a thumb would leave if you wet it and press it against paper. We'll draw this shape and gradually begin to fill it in.

I started with one curved line and then added new lines around it, bending them. To make the pattern unique, you can add several more lines around which we'll curve the others.

Sometimes it's better to break the lines, leaving gaps in them to make it look more realistic. When you've filled in the entire template, remove it, and you'll have a drawing of a fingerprint.

#6

The last lecture of the "Favorite Habits" course. How to combine habits into a system so that they reinforce each other.

A thermometer is an excellent application of the laws of physics. A glass bulb filled with mercury or alcohol. The volume of the liquid depends on the temperature. The warmer the liquid, the higher it rises in the bulb. Simple and reliable.

To draw a thermometer, it's enough to depict a bulb. At the bottom, there's an expansion for the liquid, above it - a narrow elongated tube along which a scale is marked. You can add a casing around it, or do without it.

#5

The fifth lecture of the "Favorite Habits" course, about how to use your surroundings to make life easier.

Before we start drawing the jerrycan, we need to talk about it a bit, because it's quite an interesting thing. The fact is that it has many cool design solutions.

First of all, it is called a jerrycan because of the Germans who actually designed it.

Then, the jerrycan has three handles, so two people can carry it using the outer handles, or one person can use the middle handle, depending on how heavy it is.

Next, it has a special air pocket located above the neck, so if you fill it to the brim and then drop it in water, it will float.

For rigidity, it has special recesses on the side walls. These also help the canister not to rupture during heating and cooling.

The neck is also quite cleverly designed. First, it has a built-in cap. Second, you can't see it in the picture, but there's a special tube in the neck. One end sticks out from the neck, and the other goes into the air pocket. Thanks to this, when you start pouring something from the jerrycan, it doesn't gurgle, and the liquid flows in a steady stream.

Now let's start drawing. The body of the jerrycan has an aspect ratio of approximately 4 to 6. In the upper left corner, we'll have a bulge for the air pocket.

After we've dealt with the shape, we need to add handles, the neck, and the relief on the side wall. We can also add colors.

#4

The fourth lecture of the "Favorite Habits" course, about how to start expecting failures and what to do with them.

• The unfamiliar causes discomfort and resistance.
• Willpower runs out, so it's worth saving.
• If you're not making mistakes, you're not doing anything new.

Most of us, most of the time, live with the unquestioned belief that the world looks as it does because that’s the way it is. There is one small step from this belief to another: “Other people view the world much the way I do.” These beliefs, which have been called naive realism, are essential to the sense of a reality we share with other people. We rarely question these beliefs.

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

Thanks to this feature, people can hold a model of the world in their head without overloading the brain. Because of it, it's difficult to believe that someone with an opposing view is sincere. It's hard to accept that another person has a different world in their head. Instead, it seems that the world is only as we see it, and everyone who disagrees does so to spite us. Hence the accusations of bias, corruption, or stupidity.

The world would be cozier if we could feel another person's world, but unfortunately, we cannot.

The brain is probably the most complex thing I've drawn. On one hand, it's squiggles of a certain shape. But on the other hand, I tried many times, and it turned out really bad. After a very large number of attempts, I finally got the hang of it. I'll try to explain how today.

The easiest way to draw a brain is to first draw a template of its shape. The template will need to be filled with convolutions, and then erased.

We begin filling the template with convolutions. One at a time. They shouldn't be too symmetrical or identical. That would look unnatural. They shouldn't be too different either. That would also look unnatural. The thickness should vary only slightly. And the curves shouldn't bend at different angles.

Look at a photo of a real brain and keep trying until you feel that it's starting to work out.

When the form is completely filled with curves, you just need to color in the spaces and add the brain stem and cerebellum at the bottom. You've got a brain. You're magnificent!

#3

The third lecture of the "Favorite Habits" course, about how to make building habits easier.

• Habits only stick if they suit us and we understand why we need them.
• At the start, repeating the action matters more than the quality of the action itself.
• Habits joined in a chain feed each other

📖 Book recommendation on the topic: Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.

It's better to start with the hole in the head. It's quite simple to draw: two parallel straight lines connected on one side by a curved line. The straight lines are slightly longer. The curved part is needed to fit the corner of the nut.

After we've created the hole, it's fairly easy to draw the prongs around it. From them, we continue downward to draw the handle. Make another hole in the bottom of the handle.

If desired, you can add volume.

#2

The second lecture of the "Favorite Habits" course.

Why are habits hard to change? How to make changing easier? How not to break down along the way?

Interesting bits: Friction can be usefully both reduced and increased. It's important to always have a backup plan.

A pickaxe is needed to extract ore in a mine or to till garden beds. On one side it has a sharp point, on the other - a wide blade. All this is attached to a handle, usually made of wood.

We'll start drawing the pickaxe with the large arc of its head. After that, we'll add symmetrical curves on the inner side, giving them volume. Then we just need to add the handle.

#1

Today I started the Level One course "Favorite Habits".

The first lecture was about habit formation from the neuroscience point of view. Levels of thinking, why people need habits and what they're made of.

They're made of a repeating loop: cue, action, reward.

Sometimes, to draw a picture, the easiest way is to take an existing drawing and trace it. You can use tracing paper, a light screen, or a digital drawing tool. This method works well for machines and buildings.

To draw a car, you need a picture with a car. If you know me, then you definitely know which car I'll choose :-)

First, you need to draw the wheels. Next - trace the outer contour with a thick, confident line. Then with a thinner line - the details and edges. After that, remove the reference image and add the missing details, shadows, and color.

Sounds simple :-)

Drawing a feather is not complicated. It consists of a central shaft and a vane around it. You can also use lines to show that the vane is made up of small fibers.

Basically, that's it.

In mid-July 2024, I supported the Snap Flow project on Kickstarter from Moft, a company that makes various interesting accessories. It's a paper notebook that attaches to the back of your phone with a magnet. The project took a long time to develop, then it took a long time to reach me, and finally, in February this year, it arrived. I unpacked it and used it for some time. Now I'll tell you what this thing is.

A book-like cover with a built-in phone stand. Inside, there's a replaceable cartridge with notebooks on the left and space for separate note sheets on the right. You can also attach the current sheet. It has a flat gadget that folds into a small pen and is held by magnets.. An amusing toy. I occasionally draw something in it.

So, the horse. Drawing a horse is not easy, especially if it needs to look like a horse.

Here's what I came up with: first, we draw a rectangle with four stick legs and an angular neck and head. Then we add thickness to the legs with strokes so they become somewhat similar to horse legs. Next, we add some details to the tail and mane. This way, it gradually becomes clear which lines form the horse's body.

The next step is to try drawing the actual horse, starting with the right hind leg. From it, the belly goes down, and the back goes up. Then the left hind leg, which is behind the belly. The right front leg is in the foreground. The chest continues from the belly, and behind it is the left front leg. Then the neck and head. A horse's head without ears and mane looks wildly similar to a dinosaur's head. Finally, we add ears, mane, tail, eyes, and small details. And we get a horse.

To draw an owl, you just need to complete two simple steps:

• Draw two ovals
• Draw the rest of the owl

If the simple method doesn't work for you - start with the eyes. Owls have large round eyes with stern eyebrows above them. There's also a beak between the eyes.

Around the face, the owl has a rather round head, below it is a fluffy body, and at the bottom is the most difficult part - feet with claws.

In drawing socks, the main thing is to capture the shape. They hug the foot, so there's a concave part on the sole and above the heel at the back.

When the shape is right, you can add details: stripes, colored tips or heels.

I recently decided to poke around the abandoned podcasts I'm subscribed to and found out that since October 2023 the podcast Два по цене одного has come back to life and new episodes are coming out.

A long time ago, back in my life before last, I used to listen to it, and it was fun. I downloaded all the new episodes and listened to them in a couple of weeks. The podcast comes out once a week, so together with Ilya and Alexander I relived the last two years. Some events settled differently in my head, some showed a different side. It was like rereading a book.

It was also great to feel that somewhere there are people who, just like me, are trying to figure out how to approach politics, start missing food they used to be indifferent to, and every now and then get freaked out by what's going on.

My social circle is small anyway, and after moving to Belgrade it got even smaller, and here two buddies are chatting about life, and it's like I'm sitting with them. It helps.

⭐️ Guest post from Katya Bogatyreva!

Drawing a coffee machine might be difficult, but a moka pot is simpler.

It has definitely become rooted in pop culture; when you draw a moka pot, you can almost smell the coffee.

To draw it, I visually divided the coffee maker into several parts:

1. Base, the lower part. Four quadrilaterals or curved trapezoids.

2. The arc that connects the upper and lower parts.

3. Leave space for the "spout" and draw the continuation of the four trapezoids. Add the spout and the triangular lid.

4. Handle on the side and handle on the lid.

Done, you're magnificent.

If you want to draw a guest post - message me.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

To draw ring, you need a large oval and inside it a smaller oval, shifted towards the edge. And also another piece of oval inside.

Drawing a safety pin. The safety feature is the cap that covers the needle when closed.

The main part of the pin is a steel wire coiled into a spring with extended ends. One end is sharpened, and the other has a protective cap that secures the sharp end thanks to the spring.

The most challenging part is drawing the curve of the spring.

⭐️ Guest post from Tatiana Morozova!

Whales are huge and powerful creatures, but at the same time, they are always kind and cheerful in children's books. Let's reflect this in different drawings.

• To depict a whale realistically, we'll draw the curves of its body in motion, add wrinkles all over the body, especially on the belly. We'll place the eyes at the base of the fin. Regardless of the whale species, we'll color it blue.
• A cartoon whale is cheerful and friendly. Its rounded body resembles a blue droplet with smooth lines, and a tall curved water spout shoots up above its head.

If you want to draw a guest post - message me.

Today we'll be drawing Budapest, specifically the Hungarian Parliament Building, Országház.

I really enjoy drawing buildings because by performing a large number of very simple actions, you can achieve an impressive result. You draw many sticks, circles, and triangles, and then look at what you've created and are amazed. The only drawback is that it takes a lot of time. I couldn't finish this picture in one sitting. So grab some coffee, turn on some music or an audiobook, and let's begin.

First, we'll make a . This is necessary to see the main parts of the building. I've noticed that to truly see something, it's not enough to just look at it. When you try to draw it, you see twice as much.

From the draft, we can understand what the building consists of, and we can start drawing the foundation. At this point, be careful not to overdo the vertical details. In general, all buildings have vertical and horizontal rhythms that divide the building into layers. The foundation will set the main vertical guidelines. Left, right, and central towers in the foreground, and what's between them in the background. The background lines in the foundation are positioned slightly lower. If we take the width of the central tower as 3, then the width of the outer ones will be about 2, and the connections about 4.

Now let's draw the central tower. It will set the horizontal guidelines. Start from the bottom up, like a layered cake. A separate picture shows the layers it consists of. Each horizontal layer is divided into 9 vertical sections. At the intersection of layers are windows, arches, or turrets.

Next are the wings. There are large arches that will set the vertical rhythm. There are 14-15 arches. The middle tower, which is 5 arches wide, starts 4 arches away from the central tower. A staircase 3 arches wide goes down from it.

The side turrets are left. They consist of 5 repeating vertical patterns.

The main thing is not to rush. Line by line, arch by arch, and it will all come together.

Why shouldn't one of you draw the next picture for HowToDraw?

So here's my offer: anyone who wants to can pick a topic for a drawing and write to me, and when that topic's turn comes up through the poll, I'll publish their picture and text, and draw my own as a participant!

I've been wanting to add something fresh to our routine for a long time, and we'll get to know each other better along the way!

Send your applications to sketch@erblack.me!

Sometimes in a sketch you need to show something of very low quality. For this, good old shit is indispensable. Perhaps this time we'll use our imagination instead of a photo.

To ensure the resulting product isn't mistaken for whipped cream, you can add smell and flies or color.

The last day of the Design Patterns For AI Interfaces workshop. About how to integrate AI into an existing project in a way that makes it better, not worse.

January is coming to an end, and so are the winter themes for pictures.

It's difficult to make sleds look like sleds from above or from the side. Let's try to create an isometric projection.

First, we'll draw three small boards. If you want to add beauty, you can make them three-dimensional.

Next, from the nearest board, we'll drop down two posts to attach the first runner. We'll add the tip of the second runner, fitting it along the line of the boards.

You can also add fasteners and a small rope.

The fourth day of the Design Patterns For AI Interfaces workshop. Even more patterns and classification of tasks by level of uncertainty.

The third day of the Design Patterns For AI Interfaces workshop focused on how to improve LLM responses using magic words. But first, of course, they discussed DeepSeek 😀

Drawing a snowman is very easy. Three circles of different sizes from top to bottom. On the top one - a carrot nose, in the middle one - stick arms.

Second day of the Design Patterns For AI Interfaces workshop.

Prompt management patterns and, unexpectedly, Event Storming.

The first day of the workshop Design Patterns For AI Interfaces has passed. Here's what it covered:

What do people think about how AI works, and how does it differ from how it actually works?
What control knobs does AI have, and how do they affect the generation result?
Why doesn't AI know how much text it will write, and how does it find out the weather?

Water consists of oxygen and two hydrogens. When frozen, they turn into an isosceles triangle. If you stack these triangles like pizza slices, you get a snowflake.

The shape of the snowflake depends on the freezing temperature. If it's not very cold, you get a flat snowflake, like the one on the right, and if it's very cold - a spiky one, like the one on the left.

World Sketchnote Day is today!

You can register and watch free workshops about sketches here: https://sketchnote.school/wsd/. Mine is here.

Today we'll be drawing a transformer hat. It's an ushanka. If you tie the ears on top, you can walk around looking brutally stern, like Schwarzenegger in "Red Heat," and if you lower the ears, it will be very warm.

First, we draw the front fur part of the hat. It's rectangular with rounded edges.

The next step depends on the style:

For the warm version, you need to draw the side and top of the hat and the ears hanging down with ties.

For the brutal version, draw the ears folded up and tied with a bow.

Every year on January 11th, the World Sketchnote Day takes place. This is because 1.11 resembles three pens.

In this case, various activities such as talks and workshops are held.

This year, Sketchnote Day is special for me. I will be giving a talk about sketches at WSD by Sketchnote.School along with other cool sketchnoters.

The event is free, you can register via the link https://sketchnote.school/wsd/. I invite everyone to join!

Moon.

On one hand, the Moon is just a boulder flying in space, covered with craters. But on the other hand, the Moon is something much more.

Firstly, the Moon always faces Earth with the same side. This means it has another side where almost anything could be. From a secret base of a infamous Austrian artist to Bowser's castle from Mario. In the middle of the last century, however, the far side was photographed, and some of the romance dissipated.

Secondly, it glows at night. Have you ever tried walking on moonlit nights in places without light sources? You can see quite well there.

And there are also such wonderful places on the Moon as the Sea of Tranquility and the Ocean of Storms. These names paint pictures in my head of a fantasy novel about a long journey across lunar seas.

But we still need to draw a stone with craters. That's what we'll do.

The bullet is what flies out of the pistol when fired, but we'll be drawing a cartridge. In addition to the bullet itself, the cartridge contains a case with a primer.

The primer is a small cap containing a composition that ignites upon impact. The primer ignites the powder that fills the case. The burning powder propels the bullet through the barrel, and it flies towards the target.

Magnifying glass is a standard metaphor for search or some kind of investigation.

Drawing it is not difficult. A round lens and a rectangular handle. Highlights on the lens will make the image more recognizable.

#4

The final lecture of the course. Lots and lots of exercises for developing leadership skills.

If you at least try to do all of them, you'll surely feel the changes.

A tipi is a type of Native American tent. It consists of straight poles arranged in a conical shape, with animal hides or canvas stretched around them. There's an opening at the top of the structure for smoke to escape, allowing for a fire to be built inside.

To draw a tipi, start with two poles crossing at the top. Then carefully add the fabric wrapped around them, making sure the smoke hole is visible. Next, draw the lower part to make it look like poles wrapped in fabric. Finally, add a rope that holds everything together at the top.

#3

The third lecture of the course was mostly about myths about charisma.

A diamond has a complex structure. Initially, I attempted to draw it as depicted in the image, but the result was chaotic. I realized I wouldn't be able to remember how to draw it accurately. Consequently, I had to simplify the process, and then simplify it even further.

Here's the method I developed:

Draw the basic shape of the diamond: a straight top surface, followed by two lines extending to the sides, from which two more lines connect at a single point at the bottom.

Add a horizontal line at the junction of the sides.

Draw two central edges that diverge slightly and symmetrically to the sides, converging at the bottom point.

Finally, draw two side edges extending from the upper corners, also converging at the bottom point. These should be at a greater angle than the central edges.

#2

The second lecture of the course was more than entirely made up of exercises for relaxing the body and the brain.

#1

Started another course. Charisma: how to attract and inspire others.

Notes for the first lecture: How to define your charisma.

An intriguing start, except I'm a week behind on the course :-) Need to catch up.

The frog has big eyes that stick up from its triangular snout. The front legs are small, while the hind legs are larger and stick out at the knees to the sides. Between the legs, you can see its belly.

The cog is needed to transmit rotation. One turns and rotates another with its teeth. The other will rotate in the opposite direction, and if they are of different sizes, at a different speed. A huge amount of things work thanks to the correct ratio of cogs, so the cog is an excellent standard metaphor for settings, mechanisms, and work in general.

We start drawing the cog with a circle. Around the circle, we'll draw a larger circle with a dashed line. All that's left is to draw neat teeth over the gaps in the dashed line.

The recycle bin is often used in sketches as a metaphor for something unnecessary or used up.

Drawing it is not difficult. It's just a rectangular or round bucket with papers inside.

For recognizability, you can add the recycling symbol. It consists of three arrows arranged in a Möbius strip. The symbol was invented in 1970 to denote recyclable waste. It's perfectly suited for our recycle bin.

№45

Drawing a bag is harder than it seems at first glance. Its sides are rectangular and usually come closer together at the top. To get this right, the fold lines at the bottom should form an isosceles triangle, and at the top they shouldn't. With a bit of practice, you'll catch the right angles.

Even if we feel calm and strong most of the time, there might be emergencies where we really need to act with wisdom. During these times, we might fall back into old habits or act on our basic emotions, which might not be helpful.

Sometimes, it's not hard to be a good Stoic. But other times, it's not so easy.

Remember the difference between what is really important in life and what only seems important. It'll get easier with practice.

The snail rivals the turtle for the right to be the standard metaphor for slowness. It consists of a shell and a slug underneath. The slug has two tentacles with eyes on its head. The snail also has a foot - this is its entire lower part.

We're just flying on a huge rock through the void.

Put your own oxygen mask on first.

Talk about how designers can survive and succeed in the AI era.

Presentation on how to use a design system for good, so that it doesn't become limiting.

Keynote about why neural networks are, in a sense, living beings rather than computers, and how to deal with this.

A talk on how to build a design system conveyor belt.

Talk with a story and practical advice on daily facilitation of discussions inside.

A wonderful pixel art in the form of a keynote, praising the good old pixels and pixel fonts. Slightly nostalgic.

Wisdom, courage, self-control, justice – things that help you live more simply and pleasantly.

A sparkling talk on how to teach artificial intelligence to create art that's not faceless.

A beautiful presentation of the creative journey. Many beautiful letters.

Awesome talk dedicated to professional growth and development and, in a broader sense, finding one's path in life.

Talk about what constitutes an effective chart and which charts are suitable for different purposes.

The talk about understanding CSS patterns for Figma users.

Your own thoughts and beliefs about others' actions or words cause offense, not the actions or words themselves.

Some things are within our power, while others are not.

A lighthouse is a source of bright light on the shore that helps ships at sea navigate at night. With two lighthouses in view, one can determine their coordinates on a map quite accurately. If a lighthouse is placed near dangerous rocks, it will always be possible to see where they are to avoid getting too close. Also, in books and movies, something interesting always happens in a lighthouse.

Let's draw a tall tower standing among the rocks. At the top, we'll place a glass dome with a lantern. And to make the lighthouse easily visible during the day, we'll add red stripes to it. We can also add some clouds and seagulls.

At the center of the explosion is a flash. Surrounding it is a cloud of smoke, and around the smoke cloud, fragments scatter. Behind the fragments trails a smoke plume.

In 2019, I became interested in Massimo Pigliucci's book "How to Be a Stoic" and decided to read it. From it, I learned that the stereotypical image associated with the word "stoic" doesn't fully reflect the essence of Stoic philosophy. It's much more interesting and, more importantly, practical. I liked the book so much that I even started a series of sketches based on it, but I've put it aside for now.

From there, I also learned about something called "Stoic Week." It's an annual event where each day of the week is dedicated to studying a specific Stoic discipline. In the morning, you watch a short video or read an article and spend the day thinking about the dichotomy of control, emotions, or virtues. Afterwards, you can discuss it with someone if you decided to participate together. It turns out to be quite interesting.

If you want to learn about the practical aspects of Stoic philosophy, you can register and participate in "Stoic Week" through this link, and try out the practical teachings of Stoic philosophers for yourself. It starts on October 28th. I recommend it!

At one end, the saw has a complex set of components, representing the motor housing and two handles. On the other side, it has a relatively simple blade.

Let's start with the complex part. We'll draw a handle for one hand, then add the housing and the upper handle. To the resulting body, we'll attach the saw blade, on which we'll draw the teeth.

An amazing, in-depth talk about flow in CSS.

A talk on how web components won't save the web from poor performance. You still have to think.

This talk is all about the huge difference between @media queries and @container queries.

A talk about a strategic approach in design work.

The talk is about UX writing – the way you communicate with your users.

The talk is about using AI tools for accessibility testing and to fix accessibility issues.

The talk about design systems in AI age.

When you're tired, you want to lie down.

To draw a tired person, I start with the head. The head is lying on its side, so the body is slightly shifted relative to it. One shoulder is right near the edge, and the other is a bit further away. Then the arms go from the shoulder under the head. A tired face with closed eyes completes the picture.

Apparently, a lot of people feel the need to liven things up in October. Look how many things have october in their name: Drawtober, Hacktoberfest, Orctober, Booktober. And today's subject – Inktober. It works the same way as HowToDraw, but every day instead of every week.

How to draw a burger depends on the ingredients.

A good burger should have something moisture, salty, and filling inside. It's better to draw a burger from top to bottom because in the drawing, the upper elements overlap the lower ones. It's better to cook from bottom to top.

On top is a round bun, underneath are pickles for moisture, then any meat of your choice covered with cheese for satiety. We'll put lettuce under the patty to prevent the juice from soaking the bottom bun. That's the burger we've got.

An obvious metaphor for a goal is a target. Less obvious metaphors are more interesting, but if you need to draw something quickly during a presentation, obvious metaphors are always at hand.

A target has a bullseye - a point in the very center and rings around it. Usually, the closer the ring is to the bullseye, the better the result. The center of the target is called the bullseye because archers used to practice shooting at bull skulls, and hitting the skull's eye was the most challenging task.

In a black and white target, white and black rings alternate. In a colored one, you can also add red rings.

The largest living creature on the planet is a mushroom weighing 600 tons. Mushrooms have saved millions of people from death. In the game "The Last of Us," mushrooms caused a zombie apocalypse. However, all this knowledge won't help us draw the most ordinary mushroom.

To draw the most ordinary mushroom, you need to start with the stem. Then cover the stem with a cap so that the top of the stem is hidden under the cap. All that's left is to draw gills on the underside of the cap and add details to taste.

Talk about how to build relationships between designers and developers.

An exciting tale of migrating from Flow to TypeScript.

Talk about how we can use artificial intelligence and what it can tell us about ourselves.

A deep and interesting account of how the Zenko mapping technique can be used to understand the world.

A thoughtful talk about how to create designs that are beneficial for both the environment and people.

A very fast and impressive series of demos about new browser technologies.

An amazing performance showcasing how to create accessible texts using fonts.

This talk shows how new browser features are used for better performance.

A talk on how information was used to create innovations in order to keep up with progress.

This is a report on how to turn big data and charts into accessible information.

The awesome talk describes why smart people become stupid users and how to solve that problem.

A talk about improving performance through simplicity.

Scales can be used as a metaphor for comparing different options.

Simple scales consist of a heavy platform, above which a beam hangs freely on a stand. At the ends of the beam are two pans.

These scales allow you to determine only which pan has the heavier load. To use them to find out the weight, you need to put what needs to be weighed on one pan, and on the other - enough weights to balance the scales, after which you add up the weights of all the weights used.

90% of an iceberg's mass is under water.

There are two ways to draw an iceberg. The right one and the wrong one. The wrong one looks cooler, so that's the one I usually draw. A vertically standing block of ice shows the 90% of mass under water more clearly, but heartless gravity would definitely tip such an iceberg over on its side, so the realistic version is on the right.

If you're not sure your iceberg is right, you can always check it here.

An umbrella is made of a canopy and a handle.

For the canopy, draw a big arc and two smaller arcs on either side of it. Then repeat these three arcs lower down so that the central arc is narrower and the side ones are wider. All that's left is to connect the edges of the upper arcs into a canopy.

The handle comes down from the center of the canopy and ends with a hook. A nail sticks out of the top of the canopy.

A crutch is made of two long curved tubes and one short straight one. At the top there's a rest for the armpit, in the middle a handle to hold on to, and at the end a rubber tip so it doesn't slip.

An experienced programmer can build a house using nothing but crutches.

Bluetooth is a wireless standard that works over short distances.

As it happens, the standard is named after King Harald Bluetooth, because one of its authors was into Scandinavia and runestones at the time.

The Bluetooth sign is Harald's initials joined together (ᚼ + ᛒ). It's symmetrical. Take a vertical line and divide it into 5 equal parts, then put dots at the same distance to the left and right of the line at the ⅕ and ⅘ levels. All that's left is to connect the lines to get the Bluetooth sign.

The sign is usually drawn white on a blue background.

Lvl 1 → Lvl 2 → Lvl 3!

Little Ivan is almost big now)

A flask is a vessel with a round or flat bottom. You can use it as a metaphor for a container holding something dangerous or unstable, negative emotions for example.

It's not hard to draw, the main thing is to get the shape across. Draw the outer contour with a thick line, and use a thin line inside to show that it's made of clear glass.

Notes for the talk "Digging deeper into Feature-Sliced Design" from ЯФронтенд2024.

An entertaining talk. The guys took the methodology and changed the parts that didn't work for them.

I tried taking notes in Procreate. It's still terribly inconvenient for me.

Talk recording 🎥

Sound is invisible waves travelling through the air. To draw them, we'll make them visible, and to make it clear that these are sound waves, we'll draw a speaker they come out of.

A speaker has a magnet and a coil. Electricity runs through the coil, which makes it move relative to the magnet and drag the cone along with it, and the cone moves the air, which is what makes the sound waves.

You can't see the coil in the picture, it's inside. The magnet is the black ring on the left, and the cone is the inner surface of the speaker basket.

Today’s Belgrade JS is all about java script gotchas)

It's 8th Annual World Sketchnote Day!

On this occasion, the Sketchnote School will make a small event with workshops. I'm going to participate. If you are interested, here is the registration link.

Sixth day. Stoic it up!

Friday: Seeing the bigger picture

One night I realized that the milky way is a view for the disk of the galaxy from the inside. It was cool.

Thursday: Caring for ourselves and others

Wednesday: Character and Virtues

Tuesday: Emotions

Monday: Control

Remember Little Ivan, the mech with enhanced smallness? If you don't, here's the link.

Can you believe it, a whole year has passed. Time to make the second version. Say hello to Little Ivan MK2!

A long time ago, somewhere around 1995, Apple engineers came up with the idea of a specification for describing the structure and content of a website. They called it Meta Content Framework. The plan was to build powerful 3D site navigation on top of it, like in cyberpunk. The idea didn't take off, but one of the authors moved to Netscape and developed it there into the Resource Description Framework (RDF), whose first R also happens to be the first letter of RSS.

RSS has three different expansions, but the essence is the same. It's a way to get articles from websites. You can subscribe to interesting news, blogs and articles, and read them in a dedicated app. In the golden years of RSS, linking to a feed was good manners for any platform or publication. Readers came as standalone apps, were built into browsers, and Google had a whole Google Reader. The format peaked somewhere around 2005.

And then the world moved on. Facebook came with its algorithmic feed, and publishers decided they didn't like sharing content for free. The web became centralized. RSS went into decline. By the time Google shut down its Reader in 2013, only fans were still using the format.

Now the world is moving again. Endless feeds drive people crazy. Facebook and YouTube ban whoever they want. Twitter sells blue stickers. The most freedom-loving tweeters have already crawled over to Mastodon and write toots instead of tweets. Everyone who has put enough effort into their profile, blog or channel wonders who owns the results of their work and whether it'll all be wiped out without explanation. Content creators are moving to standalone blogs. The web is fragmenting.

This is all sad, but there are upsides too. It looks like soon we'll be able to take good old RSS off the shelf, gather interesting articles from different sources in one place, feed them to a GPT model to cut the noise and write a tldr, and read. Here Feedly talks about their AI. And here Readwise invites you to try the beta of their reader with RSS support. Give it a try =)

7th Annual World Sketchnote Day

Sketches can be used for various things.

For example, to order a birthday cake.

Hi! My name is Artem)