Drawing Everyday Objects: Bananas, Keys, Cups, and Remote Controls—Turning Mundane Crap Into Absolute Gold
Let’s be brutally honest: Drawing skulls and dragons is sexy, but if you can’t make a remote control look convincing, nobody’s buying your fantasy art. The best artists I know can turn a grocery list into a damn still life. Drawing everyday objects is the fastest, dirtiest way to level up your observation skills, train your hand, and—if you’re really honest—stare down the brutal truth of what you see versus what you think you see. The world is full of weird, beautiful, stupid stuff. Bananas. Keys. Coffee mugs. That greasy remote with buttons missing. These are the unsung heroes of every sketchbook.
If you want to actually get good—and not just pretend on the internet—you need to worship at the altar of the ordinary. You’ll learn more from five cups than from fifty dragons. Ready? Let’s get weirdly specific.
Confession: My First Bananas Looked Like Boomerangs and My Keys Like Squashed Insects
No shame in it. The first time I tried drawing “just a cup,” it somehow turned into a half-melted UFO. Perspective, proportion, and shadows will betray you if you’re not paying attention. But every bad sketch got me closer to the real thing. These humble objects are the fastest path to drawing what you actually see, not what you wish you saw.
Step-By-Step: Rust Dawg’s Survival Guide to Drawing Everyday Stuff
Step 1: Grab Some Crap Off Your Desk
No prepping, no precious “setup.” Find a banana, your keys, a coffee mug, and the remote.
Plop them on the table in whatever chaos they fall. Resist the urge to arrange them like a wedding centerpiece.
Grab a pencil, cheap paper, and a good lamp. Shadow is your friend.
Step 2: Squint and See the Shapes—Not the Thing
Squint until everything blurs out. Your banana isn’t “banana-shaped”—it’s a bent cylinder with soft triangles at the ends.
Keys? Ignore the details at first—just get the flat, angular shape, the big negative space, and the round hole.
Cups are circles and ovals stacked—ellipses, not perfect rounds.
Remotes are weird bricks with buttons—block in the shape, then add the raised areas.
Step 3: Draw the Big Outline First—Don’t Noodle Details
Lightly sketch the biggest, boldest shape. Use your whole arm, not your wrist.
Check proportions. Does your remote look like it could crush your banana, or are the keys the size of dinner plates? Adjust now, not later.
Drop in a “shadow block”—just a rough shape under each item to anchor them to the table.
Ingredient Hack: The “Measuring with Your Pencil” Trick
Hold your pencil at arm’s length and “measure” the length, width, and angle of the objects as you look at them.
Compare those distances to each other on the page. This cheap trick is the only way to avoid “cup on a seesaw” syndrome.
Quick Fixes for Common Object Drawing Disasters
Banana is Flat or Stiff? Curve the spine, exaggerate the arc, and add the subtle “dips” along its sides. The ends are blunter than you think.
Key Looks Like a Child’s Drawing? Block in the silhouette first, then layer in the “teeth” and holes. Use shadow to separate the layers—don’t over-outline.
Cup is Warped? Practice ellipses—draw them over and over until your hand learns what a foreshortened circle feels like.
Remote is a Brick? Use shadow to show depth—buttons pop forward, shadow beneath. Add just enough detail for flavor, not for a product photo.
Dirty Tricks for Everyday Objects: How to Make Mundane Magic
1. Light Is Your Secret Weapon
Shine a lamp sideways across your setup—hard light creates dramatic shadows and clear form.
Trace the cast shadow first; it grounds the object and gives you an anchor.
Notice how the curve of a banana’s shadow bends and warps, or how the cup’s handle throws a weird little oval.
2. Use Negative Space to Cheat Proportion
Instead of only drawing the object, pay attention to the weird shapes between objects and the background.
Sketch the space under a key’s arch or between a cup’s handle and body. If the negative space matches what you see, the drawing will nail itself.
3. Cross-Contour for the Win
For bananas and mugs, add a few gentle cross-contour lines to show volume—think of wrapping a rubber band around the form.
Draw light lines around the cup’s body, or curve them gently down the banana’s length. This gives instant 3D without over-shading.
Rust Dawg’s “Routine of Reps” Survival Plan
Draw the same objects every day for a week.
Each time, change the angle, the light, or the arrangement.
After a few days, you’ll see your lines getting bolder, your proportions sharper, and your understanding of form deepening without even thinking about it.
Ingredient Hack: Blind Contour Studies
Without looking at your page, put your pencil on the paper and draw the outline as your eye crawls along the object.
These lines will be wild, weird, and ugly—but they’ll teach you to actually see, not just “symbol draw.”
Quick Fixes for When Everything Sucks
If it’s all falling apart, stop and draw just a two-inch section of the object—one button, the curve of the cup’s rim, the hole in the key.
Switch tools—use a fat marker or a ballpoint pen to force yourself to work loose and big.
Try drawing with your non-dominant hand for a few minutes to break perfection paralysis.
Personal Confession:
My best cup sketches came on napkins in bad lighting, when I was too tired to try for perfection. The more I let go and trusted my eyes, the more “real” those objects looked.
Survival Strategies for Drawing the World Around You—Banana to Remote, No Excuses
1. The 5-Minute Challenge
Set a timer, draw each object in five minutes flat—no erasing, no second-guessing. Rapid reps build confidence and teach your hand to capture the essence, not the fuss.
2. Rotate, Stack, and Flip
Draw the banana upside-down. Balance a key on the cup’s rim. Lean the remote against a wall. Strange combos force you to actually look, not autopilot.
3. Focus on Edges—Lost and Found
Don’t outline everything like a coloring book. Some edges disappear into shadow, others are crisp and bold. Soften the far side of a cup or blur the shadow under a banana. Use hard lines only where you want the viewer to focus.
4. Embrace the Flaws
Slightly warped banana? Out-of-round mug? Remote with a chunk missing? Draw what’s there, not what “should” be. The wobbles, cracks, and wear make your drawing real and relatable.
Ingredient Hack: Cheap Color for Punch
After your pencil sketch, add a swipe of marker, watercolor, or even colored pencil.
Use a single bold color to make one object pop—a yellow banana, a red button, a blue cup.
Don’t fuss with blending; a hit of color is enough to bring a whole sketch to life.
Why Drawing the Ordinary Is Pure Alchemy
You’ll discover how every object has a personality—bananas with attitude, keys with stories, remotes that look abused or lonely. Master the ordinary, and your imagination will have roots. The skills you build here—proportion, shadow, contour—are the same ones that make fantasy, portrait, or animal art sing.
Personal Confession:
Some of my most “liked” sketches online are just a cup and a set of keys, drawn in the quiet before breakfast. People connect to what they know, and the magic comes from showing them how strange and beautiful the familiar can be.
Final Word: Mastering the Ordinary Means Conquering Everything Else
If you can draw a cup so convincing someone wants to reach into the page and pick it up, you can draw anything. These so-called “boring” objects—bananas, keys, mugs, busted remotes—are your secret dojo. They reveal your habits, your fears, your shortcuts, and your blind spots. If you avoid them, you’re avoiding real progress.
So stack your junk on the table. Draw it until your lines flow and your shadows make sense. Celebrate every lopsided banana, every warped button, every off-kilter mug. These are your proof of practice—your foundation for everything wild and wonderful to come.
Confession: The Day I Got Over My Fear of Cups Was the Day I Started Calling Myself an Artist
When you can see, capture, and honor the everyday, you’ve unlocked the only superpower that matters in drawing: ruthless, honest observation. From there, dragons and robots are just more shapes on the table.
Ultimate Survival Wisdom: The Magic Is in the Mundane
Draw the same objects again and again; you’ll see improvement faster than with any “cool” subject.
Light, shadow, proportion, and form—all live in your cup, your keys, your banana.
Let your drawings be honest, messy, and real. That’s where style is born.
So here’s your assignment: grab the ugliest, weirdest, most ordinary object in reach and draw it. Then draw it again tomorrow. Trust me—every masterpiece in history was built on piles of cups and keys.
See Also:
“Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards (for next-level seeing)
Danny Gregory’s “Everyday Matters” (turning the ordinary into art)
Sketchbook Skool (online community for drawing daily life)
#everydaydrawing and #sketchwhatyousee on Instagram (for proof that cups rule)