Squiggle birds is a quick exercise that you can use to stretching visual thinking muscles.
It takes about five minutes and quickly, clearly demonstrates how little effort is really required to make meaningful, easy-to-read images.
The main point of the demonstration is that our minds are already pattern-making machines, and very little drawing is actually required to convey an idea. The mind will fill in the rest.
- Everyone gets a piece of paper and pen.
- Begin by drawing random squiggles on the paper. Any type of thing you want to make.
- We can add a beak using a triangle.
- We can add an eye.
- Add a couple of little bird feet.
- And add a triangle tail.
Repeat this on all the shapes.
The mind is an incredibly flexible instrument that no matter what you do, our brains naturally finds patterns. We can’t help find things and assign meaning to them.
The point is that your drawing doesn’t have to be that good—especially if you are drawing to communicate ideas. Your mind fills in the details. If there is any doubt, just label your drawing. Visual thinking doesn’t mean that we can’t use words or arrows or diagram things. When you are doing visual thinking, it is a discovery exercise.
This exercise was taught to Dave Grey from his friend Chris Glynn who is an illustrator.