6 Drawing Principles I Keep Coming Back to

These are the drawing fixes and thoughts I've found useful on my own illustration journey.

I had a lot of fun doing some alphabet illustrations for "36 Days of Type" a while back.

Just the other day I came across an illustration I did five years ago. What really struck me was how much I've evolved — trying out different styles and techniques, creating hundreds of artworks along the way. Yet a number of the core principles I use in my drawings are exactly the same. Why? Because they work, I guess. At first they were more intuitive than conscious, but as I've built experience I feel I can start calling them out — better yet, I can share them, because I think they're quite useful. Nay, needed, in any illustration.

If you're just starting out on your own illustration journey — first of all, congratulations. This path is so fun and rewarding. Secondly, read on and grab a few tips as you go. Maybe you already know all of these — great! But if you've ever had that feeling that something was off in your drawing and couldn't quite figure out what, maybe you'll find one of the answers here. Ready? Let's go.

1. Your art needs a foundation — period.

Believe me, my patterns contain a lot of floating objects. But regardless of what you make, your art needs a foundation — because of the way we see the world. If your drawing looks like it's floating in thin air and it feels weird, that's because we're simply not used to objects defying gravity. Sadly. I could actually see the fun in that.

But if your drawing has that floaty feeling, give it some ground. Maybe it just needs a subtle shadow to anchor it to the background. Maybe it needs something more solid — a couple of grass straws, a surface to rest on. Figure out what works for that particular piece, but make sure you give it somewhere to land.

Most of my art gets either a cheeky little line to feel grounded, or a table beneath an object if I've drawn one — you catch my drift. Your objects need a stable base to work from. Sometimes, in more advanced pattern designs with lots of floating elements, it's the connectors that do the grounding — like a piece of rope tied to a shelf, holding everything together.

2. No pointy edges — they sting.

Some of you will disagree with me on this one — because I do see a lot of pointy objects in the art around me. But try this. Take a piece of paper and draw the most spiky thing you can think of — pointy stuff everywhere, like a cactus but supersized, sharp sharp edges. Now look at it. How does it make you feel?

For me, I genuinely get goosebumps. You'll notice I rarely have anything pointy in my work. It's a tactile feeling — it stings. So: don't make pointy objects. Easy.

3. Stay true to your piece — consistency across an image or a collection.

This one tends to sneak up on you as a piece develops. You decide to add a shadow to one object and it looks really nice — but nothing else in the artwork has a shadow. Suddenly something feels off. I'm not saying you have to go back and add a shadow to everything, but you do have to stay consistent with your choices.

If you've added a shadow to one piece of text, then yes — you need to add it to the other similar text too. If you've added linework to a sardine can, then by golly every other sardine can in there needs linework as well. Actually, I'd say: either you have linework in a piece or you don't — that's the safest rule. Same goes for texture. Make a stylistic choice, then stick with it.

As human beings we look for patterns in everything. If something breaks the pattern, it feels wrong — and it will, every time.

4. Lines — or no lines — but if you do use them, keep them the same thickness.

This is an elaboration on the above, but it's really important: inconsistent line weight simply looks off. I don't mean brushes that intentionally vary in thickness as you draw — I mean drawing a doughnut, then drawing one behind it with noticeably thicker linework. Most people won't be able to tell you exactly why it bothers them, but it will.

Keep your linework consistent — it really counts.

And as my old art teacher used to say: there are no lines. Which is very true — when did you last see an object in real life with an outline? Lines exist in our heads. That said, I love linework and it shows up in most of my pieces.

5. Your eyes are always right — even when the maths fails.

In lettering there's something called "overshooting" — where you intentionally make an o, e or a very slightly larger than the surrounding letters, to optically compensate for the fact that curved letters appear smaller, even when they're mathematically the same size. The grid doesn't lie, but your eyes don't either.

So trust what you see. Even when something is technically, mathematically correct — if it looks too narrow or too broad, visually it is. Check again. Move it a fraction. See if that feels better. Trust me, and trust yourself.

Your artwork needs the feeling of a ground or surface so as to not seem weirdly floating.

6. Look at the big picture.

It is very easy to get lost in detail and spend hours there, only to zoom out and find that something isn't working in the overall composition — and now all that detail work can't be saved. I've been there more times than I'd like to admit.

They're right when they say the devil is in the detail. So zoom out. Keep checking where you are in the bigger picture. Save the detail work for later, get the foundations right first — you will thank yourself every single time.

A few final thoughts on what else might not be working.

Everybody can draw something that looks like something these days — sorry, it's just an overlay in Procreate — but it's your take that makes it interesting. Stick to your style and trust the outcome. The world wants to see your art.

And if a piece feels off entirely, it might not be the concept that's wrong — it could be the style you're approaching it in. Maybe this image doesn't need texture, or linework, or shading. Try a few different ways in and see what clicks. And if nothing clicks? Come back to it later. That helps too, more often than you'd think.

Enough said. Happy drawing. If you have any comments or hacks of your own to share — I'd love to hear them. Drop them below.