A Beginner's Glossary of Questionable Doodles

The quick answer: this is a dictionary for a publication called the Dicktionary, which was always going to happen. It covers three kinds of word, each marked: art terms that genuinely help you draw, history terms for the long tradition you are part of, and DrawDick terms, the site's own names for its tools and ratings, which nobody else uses and nobody should.

A

Arms (art). Two lines, optional hands. The fastest way to turn a shape into a character that can hold something, wave, or gesture at a weather map. See the challenges.

B

Bas-de-page (history). French for "bottom of the page": a picture painted along the foot of a page in a medieval manuscript. Medieval painters used the space for jokes, monsters and, as the history shows, at least one tree that should not exist.

Blue-Ball Undo (DrawDick). The undo button. Takes back your last stroke. Press it as often as you need; it does not judge.

Bobbitt (DrawDick). The lowest of DrawDick's ten ratings, a 1. "Ouch."

C

Caricature (art). A drawing that exaggerates the features that make its subject recognizable. Roman soldiers carved a caricature of their commanding officer into a quarry near Hadrian's Wall in 207 AD, so mocking the boss in pictures is not a modern invention.¹

Condom Stack (DrawDick). The layers panel. Put the parts of a drawing on separate layers to hide or delete one without touching the rest. The eraser is less polite: it rubs out anything under it, on any layer.

Cross-hatching (art). Shading with crossing lines: the closer the lines, the darker the area. Makes anything look like an engraving in an old encyclopaedia, which is the effect you want.

Cum Cannon (DrawDick). The spray paint, called Cannon on a phone. Soft, speckled, good for clouds, shadows and texture. The name was not workshopped.

E

Export & Expose (DrawDick). The download button. Saves your drawing with a drawdick.com watermark, no account needed.

G

Girth Control (DrawDick). The brush size slider. Thick lines read better at a glance; thin lines are for details.

K

King Dong (DrawDick). The highest rating, a 10. "All hail the king." Earned, never given.

L

Latrinalia (history). Graffiti written in toilets. The folklorist Alan Dundes coined the word in 1966 in a study of American restroom walls, which makes it one of the few academic terms invented specifically for this subject.²

Line weight (art). How thick a line is. Use a thicker line for the outline and thinner ones inside, and the drawing instantly looks more finished.

N

Negative space (art). The empty area around and between the parts of a drawing. Leave enough of it and the shape reads at a glance; fill every corner and nobody can tell what they are looking at.

P

Prop (art). Any object a character holds or wears: a hat, a briefcase, a tiny sword. The cheapest joke in drawing, and one of the most reliable.

S

Squash and stretch (art). An animation idea: things squash when they land and stretch when they move fast. Even in a still drawing, a slight squash makes a character look heavy and a stretch makes it look surprised.

SymmeDick (DrawDick). Symmetry mode. Everything you draw on one side appears mirrored on the other, so both halves of the base finally match.

T

Thumbnail (art). A tiny, rough sketch made to plan a drawing before the real one. Three thumbnails take a minute and save ten minutes of erasing.

Tramp Stamp (DrawDick). The stickers, behind the Stickers button: the Tramp Stamps and a pack of emoji. The fastest way to add props.

Sources and notes

1. Newcastle University, "Roman soldiers' graffiti at Hadrian's Wall quarry to be recorded" (press release, 27 February 2019). ncl.ac.uk ↩

2. Alan Dundes, "Here I Sit: A Study of American Latrinalia", Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 34 (1966). ↩