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PHIL McANDREW’S BIG LIST OF STUFF TO DRAW

ctrl+c ctrl+v from tumblr or here philintheblanks.com/thelist.html which is down pretty often…

You sit down to draw or doodle. A blank sheet of paper stares back up at you. Your pencil feels heavy. You start sweating and your vision gets all wiggly. You don’t know what to draw.

Don’t panic.

It happens to everyone! Sometimes you need a little something to get your creative juices flowing. I keep a list of STUFF YOU SHOULD DRAW. I constantly add to the list. When I sit down to doodle, I often pick something from the list at random. Some of the things on the list are fun, some are boring, some are easy, some are challenging. Some of these things you’ve probably drawn hundreds of times already. And that’s okay! The purpose of the list is just to get your pencil moving.

The list can also be used as a way to challenge yourself, to improve your drawing chops. Find something that you’re afraid to draw or that you’ve never tried to draw before and draw it. Find something you think would be really boring to draw (a ceiling fan? a chain link fence?) and find a way to make it interesting and fun. Find something you’ve drawn a million times and force yourself to draw it differently in some way. Or take a bunch of things from the list and combine them in one drawing.

1. books (and people reading them)
2. trophies (champion of _______!)
3. statues (who deserves to to be immortalized as a statue?)
4. dogs
5. naked people
6. all of houses you’ve lived in
7. sad people
8. bicycles
9. your neighbors
10. mounted animal heads
11. a map of the world (try it from memory!)
12. bugs
13. people covered with tattoos
14. fancy jewelry
15. super wrinkly old people
16. cats
17. big spooky old houses
18. Guy Fieri eating things he isn’t supposed to eat (rocks, his sunglasses, toothpaste, etc)
19. pizza (with unusual toppings?)
20. people at the beach
21. trees
22. tree forts
23. forest people
24. newspapers (and people reading them)
25. monsters
26. people on skateboards (and falling off of them)
27. people playing drums
28. slugs
29. sandwiches
30. skulls
31. bottles (full of beverages or potions or poison or water)
32. fancy cakes
33. tombstones or coffins
34. cool shoes
35. a map of your city or town
36. computers (or devices with lots of buttons and wires)
37. different kinds of chimneys (and people climbing out of them)
38. crying children (why are they crying?)
39. motorcycles
40. witches
41. animals with antlers
42. people playing poker (what does a good poker face look like? what does a desperate gambler look like?)
43. every teacher you’ve ever had (from memory)
44. snakes (did they eat something interesting recently?)
45. chairs and tables
46. cacti
47. hotdogs
48. different kinds of hats
49. people falling out of boats
50. ghosts
51. swords
52. people in the middle of dental procedures
53. horses
54. people singing badly
55. wizards
56. umbrellas
57. fictional sons of Mitt Romney (Chad Romney, Wipp Romney, Burp Romney, etc)
58. coins
59. stupid hair styles
60. self portraits (what will you look at the age of 100?)
61. vegetables
62. flags for fictional countries
63. birds doing stuff that birds aren’t supposed to do
64. pencils
65. sweaty, out of breath joggers
66. your worst fears
67. people lifting weights
68. sea shells
69. house plants
70. people playing basketball
71. turkeys
72. tentacles coming out of containers, bags, windows, etc
73. airplanes
74. fancy crowns
75. fictional members of your family
76. dinosaurs
77. people “doing science” (test tubes! strange chemicals! microscopes!)
78. musical instruments
79. castles
80. teenagers
81. snooty butlers carrying things on trays (telephones, food, unopened envelopes, small people)
82. animals wearing glasses
83. a volcanic island
84. people with ice cream cones
85. candles
86. people standing behind one of those cartoony x-ray screens
87. things that lives in caves and holes
88. cardboard boxes
89. your worst enemy
90. a painter standing at an easel, painting something from life (nude model? landscape?)
91. babies holding guns
92. suits of armor
93. fictional candy bars
94. astronauts
95. ears
96. astronauts
97. ears
98. people with tons of facial piercings
99. the moon
100. forks and knives and spoons
101. people with briefcases hoping no one knows what’s inside the briefcase
102. the aftermath of a car accident
103. a snowman
104. playing cards
105. an idiot playing piano
106. aliens
107. microscopic organisms
108. people skiing
109. snails
110. demons
111. a fictional game show host
112. sushi
113. sewer people
114. government spy drones
115. a sentient brick wall
116. coffee mugs
117. a bow and arrow shoot-out
118. a ferris wheel
119. a fish tank
120. booby traps
121. swamp creatures
122. Jay Leno weeping quietly while looking at his reflection in a mirror
123. people slipping on banana peels
124. balloons
125. people with crutches or limbs in casts
126. boogers
127. pole-vaulters
128. people stranded on desert islands
129. a dog in handcuffs, surrounded by police
130. turtles
131. mountains
132. things popping out of toasters (bread, pizza, books, etc)
133. skeletons
134. flowers
135. people trapped in the belly of a whale
136. Frankenstein’s monster
137. a terrarium
138. people smooching
139. people knitting scarves
140. grumpy bartenders
141. tents in the woods
142. arctic explorers
143. bridges
144. a television set (what’s on tv?)
145. people working in gardens
146. people stepping on bee hives
147. a toothbrush
148. PEZ dispensers
149. tourists
150. your childhood bedroom
151. people digging holes
152. a stamp collector and their stamps
153. a person being eaten alive by feral dogs
154. people wrapped in blankets
155. bookshelves
156. whatever you had for breakfast
157. comfy armchairs
158. abandoned buildings
159. icebergs
160. discarded underwear
161. carnivorous furniture
162. ducks
163. hermits and their hermit houses
164. hamburgers
165. lizard men
166. campfires
167. people smoking pipes
168. cliffs by the ocean
169. people waiting in line to use the bathroom
170. animals in hiding after escaping from a zoo
171. dogs trying to reach food on tables
172. garbage cans
173. slime creatures
174. crabs
175. fictional members of the Wu-Tang Clan
176. different types of helmets
177. logs
178. ceiling fans
179. Rush Limbaugh’s stupid face
180. palm trees
181. proud looking guys with flannel shirts and tool belts and hard hats and no pants
182. dentures
183. skeleton keys
184. binoculars
185. giant objects crashing into earth (giant baby, giant motorcycle, giant anvil, etc)
186. exercise machines that could be mistaken for torture devices
187. things hatching out of eggs (birds, lizards, guys in business suits, etc)
188. animal skin rugs
189. people blindly trying to find their missing glasses
190. hockey players
191. people flying around with jetpacks
192. squirrels trying to drag things up into trees (an entire pizza, a piano, an old man, etc)
193. proud idiot gun owners posing with guns
194. vehicles that are shapes like food (hotdog car, banana car, pretzel car, etc)
195. clocks
196. chain link fences
197. donuts
198. people wearing ridiculous puffy shirts
199. dartboard with darts in it (or around it)
200. people being thrown or falling through glass windows

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