You’ve probably seen those hyper-realistic drawings on Instagram or TikTok and felt a sudden, crushing sense of inadequacy. We’ve all been there. You want to learn how to draw everything, from the curve of a coffee mug to the complex anatomy of a human hand, but it feels like there’s some secret code you weren't given at birth. Most people think drawing is a "gift." It’s not. It’s actually just a very specific way of looking at the world that most adults have forgotten.
Drawing isn't about the lines. It’s about the spaces between them.
When we are kids, we draw symbols. A house is a square with a triangle on top. An eye is an almond with a circle inside. But if you want to know how to draw everything realistically, you have to murder those symbols. You have to stop drawing what you think you see and start drawing what is actually hitting your retina. It sounds simple, but it’s the hardest hurdle to jump.
Why You Can’t Draw What You See
The human brain is a master of efficiency. It doesn't want to process the infinite complexity of a tree; it just wants to tag it as "tree" and move on. This is great for surviving in the wild, but it’s a nightmare for an artist. To master how to draw everything, you have to bypass the left brain—the part that labels things—and engage the right brain, which perceives shapes, edges, and relationships.
Betty Edwards, the author of the seminal book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, famously proved that anyone can learn to draw by simply changing their perception. She often had students draw portraits upside down. Why? Because when a face is upside down, your brain can't easily recognize "nose" or "mouth." It just sees a weird, curvy shape. By removing the label, you're forced to draw the actual shape. That’s the secret.
Think about a bicycle. If I asked you to draw one from memory right now, you'd probably fail. Most people do. They put the chain in the wrong place or make the frame a weird geometry that wouldn't actually hold weight. But if you look at a bicycle as a collection of negative spaces—the triangles of air between the metal bars—you’ll get it right every time.
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Breaking the World Into Basic Primitives
Every single object in the known universe can be stripped down into four basic 3D shapes: the sphere, the cylinder, the cube, and the cone. If you can draw those four things and rotate them in your mind, you can literally how to draw everything. No joke.
Take a human arm. It’s basically a series of cylinders. A head? A sphere with a flattened cube for the jaw. A car is just a complex arrangement of boxes. When you look at a complicated subject, don't get overwhelmed by the detail. Details are a trap. They’re the "sparkle" that distracts you from the fact that your underlying structure is wonky.
- Start with the "gesture." This is the flow of the object. A quick, two-second line that captures the soul of the pose or the tilt of the object.
- Build the "mannequin." Use those cylinders and cubes to build the 3D volume.
- Add the "contour." This is the skin or the outer edge that wraps around your 3D forms.
- Finally, add the light and shadow.
The Science of Seeing Light and Shadow
Light is what gives objects form. Without it, everything is just a flat 2D silhouette. To understand how to draw everything, you have to understand the "Value Scale." In art, value refers to how light or dark a color is.
Most beginners are terrified of dark values. They stay in the safe, middle-grey zone. But if you want your drawings to "pop" off the page, you need contrast. You need that deep, charcoal black next to a bright, white highlight.
- The Highlight: Where the light hits the object directly.
- The Core Shadow: The darkest part of the object itself.
- The Reflected Light: The light that bounces off the table and back onto the bottom of the object (this is what makes things look 3D).
- The Cast Shadow: The shadow the object throws onto the surface it's sitting on.
If you omit the reflected light, your drawing will look flat. Every time. It’s a tiny detail, but it’s the difference between a circle and a sphere.
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Perspectives and Why They Break Your Brain
Perspective is the part where people usually give up. It feels like math, and most of us got into art to avoid math. But linear perspective is the only way to create the illusion of depth on a flat piece of paper.
If you’re trying to figure out how to draw everything in a room, you need to find your horizon line. That’s your eye level. Everything above it slopes down; everything below it slopes up.
There's also "atmospheric perspective." This is the fact that as objects get further away, they lose contrast, get lighter, and usually turn a bit blueish. Look at a mountain range. The closest peak is dark and sharp. The furthest peak is a pale, hazy blue. If you apply this to your drawings, you suddenly have infinite depth without even trying that hard.
Perspective Isn't Just for Buildings
People think perspective is only for drawing cities or boxes. Wrong. You need it for faces too. When someone tilts their head back, you’re looking at them in "foreshortening." Their chin becomes huge, their nose moves up toward their eyes, and their forehead disappears. It’s just perspective applied to a fleshy, weird shape.
Mastering the "loomis method"—named after Andrew Loomis—is the gold standard for this. He broke the human head into a sphere with the sides sliced off. It’s a geometric formula that works for any angle. It’s the closest thing to a cheat code for drawing humans.
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Dealing With the "Ugly Phase"
Every drawing goes through an ugly phase. Usually around the 40% mark. This is where most people quit because they think they’ve messed up. Honestly, you probably haven't. You’ve just reached the point where the initial excitement has worn off, and the hard work of refining begins.
Professional artists don't have "magic hands." They just have the stamina to sit through the ugly phase until the drawing starts to make sense again. They iterate. They erase. They use reference photos.
Speaking of references: use them. There is a weird myth in the art world that using a photo is "cheating." It’s not. It’s learning. Even the masters like Vermeer or Da Vinci used optical aids or live models. Your brain isn't a hard drive; it can't store the exact way light hits a velvet curtain. Look at the curtain. Draw the curtain.
Actionable Steps to Improve Today
If you want to actually get better at how to draw everything, you need a system, not just a "vibe."
- Draw for 15 minutes every day. Consistency beats intensity. A 5-hour marathon once a month is useless compared to 15 minutes a day. It’s about muscle memory and eye-brain coordination.
- Carry a small sketchbook everywhere. Draw people on the bus. Draw your coffee cup. Draw your own foot while you're watching TV.
- Focus on "blind contour" drawing. This is a drill where you look at an object and draw the outline without ever looking down at your paper. It feels stupid. Your drawing will look like a pile of spaghetti. But it's the best way to train your eyes to see what's actually there.
- Master the "egg." If you can draw an egg with perfect shading—including the core shadow, reflected light, and cast shadow—you can draw a human face. A face is just a collection of egg-like volumes.
- Study anatomy, even if you draw cartoons. You have to know where the bones are to know why the skin bulges in a certain way. Look at the "Proko" tutorials on YouTube or the classic Bammes anatomy books.
Drawing is a physical skill, like playing the piano or shooting a basketball. You’re going to be bad at it for a while. That’s fine. The goal isn't to be "good" immediately; the goal is to be slightly less "bad" than you were yesterday. Once you stop worrying about making a masterpiece and start focusing on the relationships between shapes, the world opens up. You realize that how to draw everything is simply the act of being present and actually looking at the world, maybe for the first time in your adult life.
Stop overthinking the "style." Style is just the unique way you make mistakes. Embrace the mistakes, keep the pencil moving, and eventually, the things on the paper will start to look like the things in your head.
Start with a simple object on your desk right now. Don't label it. Just draw the shadows. That’s where the magic starts.