Randall Munroe Quotes

I am very bad at drawing. Seriously. I can draw shoes. That's about it.

I wasn't a very good draughtsman.

My wife will go, 'You know, you're drawing a shoe right now.' I do that all the time.

Being able to draw means being able to put things in believable space. People who don't draw very well can't do that.

As an illustrator you need to understand the human body - but having looked at and understood nature, you must develop an ability to look away and capture the balance between what you've seen and what you imagine.

I work on fittings, mostly. You know, I sketch less and less in my work. I sketch for the show sometimes, but then it becomes more conceptual. But when I don't sketch, it becomes more pragmatic.

Sometimes I like to draw.

Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.

It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.

Growing up, I enjoyed drawing, but it was always in the service of an idea. I drew all the time, and I enjoyed making.

I'm not particularly good at doodling. I'll doodle the same face over and over again.

When I draw, I always recall my mindset when I was a child.

Do you have hands? Excellent. That's a good start. Can you hold a pencil? Great. If you have a sketchbook, open it and start by making a line, a mark, wherever. Doodle.

I remember going through school and doing art, which was the only thing that I actually found fulfilling, and I couldn't really figure out why. Then I got into college and started messing around with photography, and I realised that it was about getting the images that were in my head out in a way that didn't have to be spelt correctly.

I was a baby when I began, but I knew exactly what I wanted to wear myself. I became a jewelry designer because I knew how to do something with a pencil and sketch my ideas.

You can't do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh.

I was always pretty good at designing things.

I've always had a good handle on drawing children.

Besides, Weebles are too hard to draw - they just end up looking like eggs, not people.

I come in. I'm going to sketch, I'm going to drape, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Draw what you see.

For 'Picture This,' I wanted it to be a drawing book that didn't have any instructions about drawing, beyond the real simple stuff you'd find like in a Bazooka bubblegum wrapper, or in 'Highlights' magazine. I just wanted it to be feelings about looking and seeing and pictures.

I was always doodling house sketches.

When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water... If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirit.

Therefore, when we arrive in a place and talk to new people about a new image, it is very hard for them to visualize it. That's where the drawings are very important, because at least we can show a projection of what we believe it will look like.