Drawing Icons: Micro-lesson and Sketchbook Project
Where we learn the right icons to draw and how to draw them, plus some cool ideas about how to set up a sketchbook page.
Helllooo! I’m Adam Ming, recently (at 40), I jumped into my dream job of being a picture book illustrator, and it is a DREAM of a job.
Once a week I send you a FREE letter that has a Micro-lesson, and a Sketchbook project that you can work on for the whole week (10 minutes a day). This is said letter!
If you have leanings towards a creative dream job - This is the place to start!
If you are also living you dream job - This is the place to play and fill your creative well!
It’s 100% Free. (And there’s an upgrade to get ALL the THINGS)
Micro Lesson: Drawing Icons
Drawing icons is the most important part of my practice.
Yet I only have an intuitive understanding about what it’s all about. This is me trying to put that understanding into words. If you don’t already see illustrations as being all about drawing icons, this is going to be a major breakthrough for you.
Visual Words
If an illustration is a sentence, then icons are the words.
And arrangement of icons creates the meaning of an illustration. Change the icons, you change the meaning. Change the order of the icons you also change the meaning.
Before I understood that illustrations were made of icons, I focused on the wrong thing.
I focused on drawing things right.
On perspective.
On detail
On an overwhelming amount of stimuli that I was trying to get onto the page.
These failed attempts at illustration always felt muddied. And I never could convey my meaning. Sure I knew the basics of drawing. But I was not using it to create the building blocks of illustrations.
All I had was visual babbling.
Thinking in Icons
Once I realised that illustration was about drawing icons and then arranging them to tell a story.
My work became much more effective. The work started to getting noticed by teachers, publishers and agents. My creative growth and career skyrocketed.
What’s an Icon? (Adam Ming edition)
An Icon is a drawing that has a purpose and meaning.
Logos are Icons, street signs are icons and illustrations are built of icons.
Let’s look at an example:
This scene composed of icons each in its place to tell a story.
A map, boots, flashlight, binoculars these icons foreshadow an adventure.
The character is an icon conveying emotion and personality.
The window is an icon conveying time of day and the source of the sound.
No icon is used frivolously, each is carefully chosen.
How do you draw an icon
Let’s think once again the street signs, these are example of icons we encounter daily.
These are designed to convey meaning even if you haven’t seen such a sign before. When turning a subject into an icon, we need to think along these lines.
Think of the purpose and meaning of the object you are drawing.
Then think of simplifying the object to be easily read.
When drawing icons I like to think of universality.
For example, there are many types of modern flashlights, even a phone has a flashlight. But for the purpose of this story, I drew what would be easily and quickly read as a flashlight to most viewers.
One last thing to consider is the 2D shape of the icon, which angle would make the object’s shape most recognisable. If you did the first project, you would already have practice doing this.
Okay I think you’re ready to draw some icons.
Sketchbook Project: 7 Little Things
Every day for a week we are going to draw 7 icons.
These can be as simple or as elaborate as you like.
For example if you pick an elephant to draw here are two extreme examples of how you can choose to draw them as icons.
At the end of the day we’ll be trying to draw them in our own style.
Now what will we be drawing exactly?
That’s part of the assignment.
Everyday, you’ll be making a new Collection of icons. Here’s how you’ll do it.
Pick your theme and write it as a title
List 7 items
Draw a frame, and draw your icons within the frame
This is a sketchbook setup that you can use over and over again.
I encourage you to make your own list.
Or you can feel free to borrow mine.
7 types of shoes (Monday)
7 types of heads (Tuesday)
7 things you’ll see on a map (Wednesday)
7 Silhouettes (Thursday)
7 Sea Animals (Friday)
7 Flying Animals (Saturday)
7 Things you might see in space (Sunday)
Note: Paid subscribers will get a daily email where I share more thoughts on drawing each of the list, and how to make ‘better’ lists. They will also get the 14 daily sketchbook notes from the past 2 weeks AND all the things.
Gallery
Share your sketches here, and give an encouraging word to the others!
Icon Drawing Workshop
PS: I’m Co-Hosting a drawing workshop on Zoom next week for paid subscribers with
Katie Stack ,you can read her thoughts on icons here.
And find out about the workshop and watch the recording, here:
Art Gym: Creating with icons
The importance of creating with icons. All of us are at different stages of our creative journey. We want to share a transformative approach that revolutionized not just our artwork but the way we perceive the illustrative process: thinking in icons.
Excited for this week’s micro-lesson. You are helping me free up my playfulness and release my stifling self-judgement. Thank you!
Awesome! I’m super happy doing this 10 minute sketchbook with you...it’s really helping me quick thinking and simplifying my illustrations. Yet to share with you all the sketches 🫣 I’ll try to be more regular posting them and be more interactive with others who post their work from this week...I think I’ll need “10 minutes social” schedule for this now! 😜😅