What not to Draw

An occasional dilemma as an artist is what not to draw. Not in the sense of still life representation, or even just doodling. I speak of when you have to put a plan together for something that may need to be drawn several times. This happens alot in videogames and especially in comics. Take for instance the sugar packet holder pictured here. Version A is the actual item found at the counter and at tables at my usual hangout. I drew it because it looked interesting, but after I did I thought to myself, "Man, I don't want to have to draw that again." And I thought, if I had to do a comic that was set in a diner, any accuracy would be lost just in the fact that while real, its not an immediate discernible object, since you need way too much detail to get the idea across. At small scale you could painstakingly try to render it as best you could, let alone having to deal with a complex shape at different angles.

I remembered another sugar packet holder thing from another diner, that was a simple ceramic dish. Even from memory, version B reads pretty damn specific. You might not even know what A was if I didn't say so (questionable artistic skills aside). And at least at a distance the dish holds its shape better with less detail, if not to become simple geometry the farther away you get.

Eh, I don't know. Just some thoughts.