Fastest Possible Drawings of Everything

Decidedly the fastest possible drawings of everything, one thing at a time, as drawn by @laureado and @tangentialism. var clicky_site_ids = clicky_site_ids || []; clicky_site_ids.push(66438768); (function() { var s = document.createElement('script'); s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.async = true; s.src = '//static.getclicky.com/js'; ( document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0] ).appendChild( s ); })();

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a Martini, by Laurea, in 6.7 seconds.

We're always a little disappointed to see a martini glass with anything other than a martini inside it. Think about it: the Fastest Possible Martini is the fastest possible identifiable cocktail, as long as you assume that there is only one permissible use of a martini glass (and you should).

We won't take sides in the great "gin versus vodka" debate, other than to point out Jim Coudal's perfect description of the perfect martini. Fortunately for us, when working with a single pen, a blank card, and as little time as possible, all alcohols are clear. Other than that, there is only an olive here, small and perfect, speared with a toothpick; if you have identified it as a maraschino cherry, you have made a mistake, as--again--only a martini can be served in a martini glass, and no martini is served with a cherry.

To that end, does our tautological argument about the quintessential martini-ness of the martini glass hold water? [ed: No.] Could the Fastest Possible Martini be the simple elevated wedge profile of the glass itself? Understand this, reader: We hold ourselves to a higher standard; we are not simply depicting, but instructing. A martini glass holds a martini--there must be a martini within it, and a martini is [either gin or vodka], [shaken or stirred], with only the distant memory of vermouth and an olive (or two). If you did not know this, now you know. You also know that it takes 6.7 seconds to draw it.

Perhaps it is a bit early to put this out there, but it's always noon somewhere, and history requires that I mention it: This, thrice over, makes a killer lunch. Enjoy them slowly, and converse.

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All of Laurea's Birthday Cakes, in an average of 5.2 seconds.

It is only fitting, after a break of almost exactly two months, to start again where one left off--namely, with a collection of Laurea's Fastest Possible Birthday Cakes, as drawn by the very talented attendees of her bicoastal thirtieth birthday parties. As it turned out, Laurea's birthday was a pleasantly drawn-out affair this year, with little gatherings in New York and San Francisco, both of which featured booze and pens. The selection here took a grand total of 163 seconds to complete, and is organized more or less according to speed, with Masha's one-point-seven-second masterpiece at top left and some stranger's fifteen-second thirty-first birthday cake at bottom right (which, arguably, makes theirs the Fastest Possible Cake for Laurea's Birthday Next Year).

Over the weekend, we've assembled our return to glory for 2012. In the meantime, click on the cakes up top and enjoy the fearsome Wall Of Cake that our dearest friends were kind enough to draw for us; some of them very, very badly, but all of them Fast.

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One of Several Fastest Possible Birthday Cakes, in honor of Laurea's birthday (which is today), as drawn (in this case) by Christine Yoon in 7.7 seconds.

This was by no means the fastest cake drawn at Laurea's birthday parties over the last two weeks--there were forty competitors caking it up, and some people took an aggressively lean approach that, let's say, "stretched the boundaries of how you think of cake." In the spirit of Fastest Possible Drawings, though, this one gets the roundness of the cake, the celebration of the candles, and the birthdayness of the "30" (and the !!!) It's really a fine cake, and while we'll be putting them all together for you folks next week--along with the rest of our first foray into third-party drawings--I thought it best to celebrate Laurea's actual birthday today with one of my favorites.

So, Fastest Possible Happy Birthday to Laurea, who is my absolute favorite person on earth and a jaw-droppingly fast drawer. Go tweet her the fastest possible Happy Birthday on Twitter at @laureado!

Once you have accomplished that, enjoy the Fastest Possible Happy Thanksgiving. We will see you next week!

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a Walrus, by David, in 12.4 seconds.

Inspirations for my brain's conception of this Fastest Possible Walrus included both Jabba the Hutt:

...and beanbag chairs:

Given those inspirations, our Fastest Possible Walrus is, unfortunately, not the ferocious king of the North that walrus aficionados might have hoped for (you have been waiting for our walrus, right?) No, though his tusks are long and sharp, our take on Odobensus rosmarus is a glum fellow, and sedentary. His turn-ons include: arctic beaches and Star Wars films. Turn-offs: brash young Jedis and orcas.

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a Jack o' Lantern, in 11 seconds, by Laurea.

As with most lightheartedly-scary things, the Jack o' Lantern comes from a time when a carved vegetable lanterns were the only things standing between you and a host of evil spirits waiting to eat your soul. In time, those malevolent spirits became children waiting to throw eggs at you, and the sacrifices left on the doorstep became tiny Snickers bars and non-poisoned apples. Through it all, candle-lit gourds (turnips, in the old world, which gave way to the softer flesh of pumpkins here) have guarded our porches by night and laughed in the face of darkness and teenagers.

Complete with slightly botched carving on the right eye socket, this is Laurea's final entry in the Fastest Possible Halloween. Two teeth, triangle eyes, and an enormous grin. The only thing missing is a candle and three more weeks of unsightly rotting pumpkin.

Quick, carve a Jack o' Lantern and place it on your doorstep, or draw one and place it on your desk--then send it to us here, or post it on Twitter and mention @fastestdrawings. Best entry gets a custom-drawn tiny Snickers bar, and the promise not to teepee your house.

A Fastest Possible Halloween to you all! Watch for flaming bags of poo!

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a Mummy, by Laurea, in 9.5 seconds.

As we head into the Halloween weekend, Laurea drops another treat into our Fastest Possible Bag of Halloween. I had not thought about it when I gave her this card, but Laurea has reminded me that there are two kinds of mummies--the Museum Mummy and the Bloodthirsty Mummy, depicted below:

Museum Mummy:

Bloodthirsty Mummy:

(Mummy pictures are very scary to look up on Google. Don't underestimate it.)

Now, Laurea knew that I was giving her a Halloween Mummy to draw, but she wisely took the Fastest Possible path and drew an armless Museum Mummy instead. You might argue that this more closely resembles a grub than a mummy, but ancient Egyptians would probably take offense, and I'd suggest you not argue that.

Conveniently, the Fastest Possible Mummy makes for a very ineffective predator, given that his legs and arms are bound. The resigned look on his face should indicate the disappointment he feels in the bloodthirsty reputation mummies have earned in the last three thousand years. Against his will, then, the Fastest Possible Mummy will carry you through the weekend, after which we will reveal our final, long-awaited, Fastest Possible Halloween drawing.

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a Poison Apple, in 13 seconds, by Laurea.

As the second edition in our Fastest Possible Halloween series, Laurea unveils this Fastest Possible Poison Apple. I'm quite pleased with it, actually, because (like the best drawings here) it's the intuitive response to an impossible request. It's not clear to me why this is the case, but a worm in an apple pretty clearly telegraphs "poison apple" in American culture. This is strange, because it seems like worms are just as easily poisoned as princesses.

What's the deal with the weird freak flag that the worm is flying here? Maybe it's the fumes of the poison--a last, desperate gasp of warning to the impending diner/poisonee. The worm is very concerned for you--as are we here at FPDoE--and urges you to be exceedingly observant this Halloween of razor blades; unwrapped candies; zombies; and wormy, Fastest Possible Poison Apples.

Our slapdash Fastest Possible Halloween continues with creepy gusto tomorrow.

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a Skeleton, in 21 seconds, by Laurea.

As we approach Halloween, it seems appropriate to begin our first series of thematic Fastest Possible Drawings. A month ago, I gave Laurea five Halloween-themed cards to draw, and this excited skeleton is the first result. Well, this excited skeleton or astonished man with a turtle on his chest (astonishing!)

I'll hold the analysis today, but leave you with this: Once you've drawn a few dozen stick figures, it's funny to see a Fastest Possible Skeleton with more lines than your "alive people".

More Fastest Possible Spookiness tomoooooorrooooow.

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a Hot Dog Cart, by David, in 22 seconds.

There are still a lot of hot dog carts on the streets of New York, but like phone booths, it seems nobody uses them. That's not to say that street food is dead as an industry--hundreds of halal meat and upscale food trucks line the curbsides of Midtown streets--but that the competition for a bite on the go is a lot stiffer than it was twenty years ago. I, for one, have bought more bottles of water from hot dog carts than I have hot dogs (which some people swear by, but which I never crave).

Still, the hot dog cart is the proud flag of our street food city, and they offer a tiny bit of shade under their Sabrett-branded umbrellas to people who are really hungry. The Fastest Possible Hot Dog Cart has one of those umbrellas, of course, and a little cabinet for ketchup and change. At the end of the day, the stressed-out stick figure behind it will fire up a little electric motor and slowly roll the cart to a truck sitting five blocks away. Shoved into the back of the truck with nine other carts, it will head home to the West Side of Manhattan for the night. In the winter, it will emerge roasting chestnuts, which, like the hot dogs, almost nobody will eat; but the smell of their smoke, and of steamed hot dog buns, will sustain New Yorkers of all classes and origins through the winter, and keep us happy here.

Also, really super cold Gatorade, and other cool facts about hot dog carts.

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the Earth, by Laurea, in 13.8 seconds.

When we first solicited requests, an anonymous young person asked for "Da Erf". Well, young person, here is your Fastest Possible Erf. It contains many things, but is a thing unto itself, and as such deserves its own card.

The thing I like most about this Fastest Possible Erf Earth, besides the fact that it gets things more or less correct (the Panama Canal is pretty huge, but let's give it a break), is that it's drawn from the perspective of a viewer orbiting directly above the Philippines, which is where Laurea was born. Granted, the Philippines is not really half the size of continental Asia, but it's charming nonetheless.

It reminds me that the Fastest Possible Thing Drawn By Anybody is as much about the Anybody as it is about the Thing. This is Laurea's Earth, but it's the Fastest Possible Earth, so it's yours, too. As always, we'd love to see the Erf Earth from your Fastest Possible perspective (Australians and Chileans, we are especially sorry that this is upside-down, and urgently solicit your corrections). Tweet or mail your planets to us, earthlings.

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a Cup of Espresso, in 32.7 seconds, by David.

We've talked about relative size before here, in the context of a Giant Squid that, without a normal-sized boat above it, would seem... less than giant. This leads me to explain why my Fastest Possible Cup of Espresso took 32.7 seconds to draw (longer, I believe, than it should take to drink). First of all, what distinguishes an espresso from all other coffees? Basically, it's a coffee in a tiny cup. And how, gentle reader, do you draw a tiny cup, without also showing something normal-sized, like a boat? And who's to say it's not a cup of tea, which can also be tiny?

The Fastest Possible Cup of Espresso (as far as I am concerned) must be accompanied by the Fastest Possible Espresso Machine, so you know what made it and how small it is. As a result, each object--both the Cup and the Machine--took only 16.35 seconds to draw. But wait! After everything I've stressed about relative size, look how enormous my coffee cup is. I've made some critical flawed assumptions about perspective and distance that, to some, might suggest that my espresso cup is nearly two feet wide. Yes, the sugar cube on the saucer seems to help, but this Fastest Possible Cup of Espresso, if it lives on the same plane as the machine, is a Big Gulp failure of a drawing.

Enter Laurea.

The day we did these drawings, each of us selected a few of our partner's greatest failures and re-drew them. Laurea's selection of this drawing was predicated on the same argument I opened with: "An espresso is a tiny cup." Would you like to see how Laurea draws a tiny cup, in only 9.3 seconds?

Triumph! The actual Fastest Possible Cup of Espresso on an enormous plate, as drawn by Laurea de Ocampo, in a fraction of the time I had assumed was possible! Now you all know why I married the woman, and how long it takes to draw a tiny cup of anything at all.

Stay tuned, true-believers, for still more Fastest Possible Failures (hint: there are a bunch).

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a Desert Island, by Laurea, in 12 seconds.

Assuming all (or most) of us think of this island as the archetypal Desert Island, how many of us have seen such an island? How many little sandy islands with exactly one palm tree are actually out there? The New Yorker cartoon archive alone holds over three hundred and seventy desert islands, but Wikipedia makes no estimation of the actual number. We can only imagine that there are many hundreds of thousands, each of which is populated by a poor bedraggled fellow who is either putting a message in a bottle or who is waiting for a reply to the bottle he has already thrown.

Laurea's Fastest Possible Desert Island corresponds nicely to the standard: little bedraggled fellow, round island not exceeding twenty feet in diameter, palm tree (with optional coconut). We're of two minds about whether the seas around the Fastest Possible Desert Island should be "forbiddingly choppy" or "maddeningly calm", but the waves on Fastest Possible Oceans are typically sort of rough, so we've got a rogue wave coming in from the right here--with a less aggressive turn of the pen, it might have been a shark fin, which would also have been perfect. As usual, the weather on the Fastest Possible Desert Island is clear and sunny; conveniently (or unfortunately, maybe), it never rains.

Is our stranded sailor sprawled out desperately or reclining patiently? What is the deal with these castaways anyhow--can they reasonably subsist entirely on coconuts and lazy fish? We like to imagine this fraternity of lonely hermits, none of whom will ever meet, separated by leagues of ocean (maddeningly calm, forbiddingly choppy) and communicating with bottles. It's sort of like the Internet, but with coconuts.

Our message in a bottle to you: The fantasy of solitude that is the Fastest Possible Desert Island, which we're sure you recognize. Bottle one back to us with a tweet to @fastestdrawings.

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a Satellite, in 14.5 seconds.

I want you to go back a hundred years, to 1911. That year, a pilot landed on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania--the first time anybody had landed an aircraft on a ship. Eight years earlier, the Wright Brothers achieved powered flight for the first time in history. Superconductivity was discovered in April, and on the night it happened, the sky was devoid of everything but rocks and ice.

It wasn't until 1957 that the Soviet Union flew Sputnik 1 into low Earth orbit--the first artificial satellite. Within four years, there were a hundred and fifteen. Today, roughly three thousand artificial satellites hover over the earth, in a freakishly-crowded net of orbits. We take their presence up there so much for granted that we barely consider the possibility that the term "satellite" might refer to anything other than a man-made, multi-million-dollar space machine.

Satellites today perform a vast range of sophisticated tasks for us: observing the sun, transmitting phone calls, broadcasting reruns of Seinfeld, and directing us to the nearest highway exit. Some, we presume, perform more secretive tasks (though none nearly as creepy as that of the second Sputnik, whose only doomed passenger was a part-Samoyed terrier named Laika). Up there, hundreds of experiments and millions of words and bits and images pass silently in the night in a tangled mess of complex purposes and plans. By contrast, that first, lonely Sputnik's only directive was simple--to beep, regularly, in all directions.

That's what our Fastest Possible Satellite is up to (though the term "boop" seemed more hilarious as I drew it). The radiating arcs that we now think of as a Wi-Fi symbol are, to my mind, the universal sign for transmission-from-space, and here indicate the travel of a benign "boop" towards some small hamlet in Brazil. Finally, our Fastest Possible Satellite has two dish antennas: one pointed out to space, listening for news from friends; and the other pointed down at us, to remind us that it is up there, keeping us company and helping us find our way home.

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a Television, in 7.5 seconds.

By the time today's three-year-old is old enough to see this drawing, the notion of a television set with rabbit ear antennas will seem so antiquated that Laurea will need to redraw it. In the meantime, you know what you're looking at: a big, heavy cathode ray tube behind a glass screen, with a durable outer casing to prevent fall-apart (I could only find a German version of that Simpsons reference--sorry.)

I'm not sure what Laurea's watching on this Fastest Possible Television Set. A person? By a big box? I'll go ahead and call it the Fastest Possible Episode of Doctor Who:

Or the Fastest Possible 2001:

Both are excellent choices, and highly appropriate for a drawing of an object that has both transformed our civilization (if not our entire species) and connected us to lives and histories considerably different--and less obsessed with television--than our own.

Do us a favor: don't spend too long in front of our Fastest Possible Television Set (we barely did!) Go draw something and send it over to us instead, so we can see it on our magic mirror (we see Cat, and Natalie, and Claudia!)

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a Trapeze Artist (or two), in 15.4 seconds.

I suppose we could have gotten by with one, but nobody goes to the circus to watch somebody swinging back and forth on a bar. The "woo" of watching a trapeze artist is in the moment at which they commit to leaping to another bar, or into somebody else's hands--as that somebody hangs, swinging from another bar, by their knees. The trapeze artist, standing on the floor, is all concealed talent--they are a stockbroker in a halloween costume. Even hanging from the bar, they are just playing a role, laying in wait. The two moments, I'd argue, that a trapeze artist is the Fastest Possible Trapeze Artist (in his or her ideal state) are:

Standing on the platform, waiting to jump

At the apex of the swing, committed to the leap

When you look at it that way, the Fastest Possible Trapeze Artist is all about the thrill of commitment. Nobody knows that the jump will go perfectly--it's very possible that the trapeze artist will fall limp into the net--but he will absolutely, at those two moments, believe that everything is flying in lockstep, and that there will be something solid at the tips of his fingers when he lets go. That's the fellow on the right, with the "woo", as you might have guessed.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls! In the center ring, The Fastest Possible Trapeze Artist!

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a Space Alien, in 9 seconds, by Laurea.

As far as I can tell, humanity sees Space Aliens as one of two archetypes: Marvin the Martian

and the Gray Alien.

Both, along with our Fastest Possible Space Alien, share freakishly-large eyes and a small-to-nonexistent mouth. In addition, Laurea's tossed in a robe and the archetypal flying saucer (with lights).

Both Marvin or the Gray Alien have a reputation for aggression, invasive surgery, and/or ray guns, but our Fastest Possible Space Alien--though he or she has left the spacecraft--bears us no ill will at all. Whatever happened to "We Come In Peace"? Why have we forgotten the goofy and enormous alien space tubas from Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Even the visitors from The Day the Earth Stood Still were peaceable folk. So, then, is our Fastest Possible Space Alien--a chum from beyond the heliosheath, by whose comfortable muumuu we ought already to recognize a kindred spirit.

Hail, Fastest Possible Space Alien! We come in peace!

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Some thoughts.