how to draw a perfect heart

How to Draw a Heart

a helpful, allegorical guide

What you will need:

• pen—preferably comfortable to use, red if you're feeling especially artistic

• paper—clean, free of marks, and as much as you have available

• clean desk and comfortable chair—your back should be kept straight, so pick a chair and table accordingly so that they will be the proper height

• food and drinks if you think you will need them

• trash can

Please note that the following instructions are written with right-handed people in mind. If you are left-handed, flip these instructions as necessary to suit your needs.

Take a s heet of paper and lay it flat on the table, a short end facing you. Place the tip of your pen in the center of the page and about a quarter of the way down from the top of the page. Begin by making a semicircle moving towards the left side of the page.

At this point, you will notice that your semicircle is not smooth—it has bumps and ridges. This is ok, but you will need to start over. Crumple up this piece of paper and throw it out.

Take a new sheet of paper and try again. You will draw the semicircle properly this time, but you will instead draw the semicircle too large, so that your pen goes off the paper. Crumple the paper and try again. This time you will get your semicircle right.

Once you have drawn your semicircle, you will realize that this doesn't look quite right—it's too tall. You should be drawing a spiral-type shape instead—the curve is going to grow outward. Try again with this in mind. If necessary, look online for a picture of a golden spiral for reference.

It will take several tries, but eventually it will look mostly right. Your spiral will move outward from the center toward the left to a point where it begins to move back to the center. About halfway between the center and the leftmost point, stop. Here you will turn the curve outward, tapering it to a point directly below the point you started from and a quarter of the way from the bottom of the page. However, you will mess up, and your taper will end in the wrong place.

Start over before you attempt this last step—start fresh. It will just be wrong, so restart before you have a chance to fail. The next time you try, you will start your curve directly below the center of your heart, and you will need to retry. Then this time, you will start your curve too far to the outside and the heart will seem lopsided again. You will try over and over, failing at this step.

Eventually, you will get it right, so that the left side of the heart finally looks correct. However, you will now have to try to create a perfect mirror to this side on the right side. On your first attempt, you will make the right side too thin. You will try over, and mess up the steps you had gotten right before. Try again. This time, you will get the left side right, but make the bottom curve too tall on the right side. Try again. You will make the right side too wide. Try again.

Try again.

You will never draw a perfect heart, no matter how hard you try. Every time you try, you will make some mistake, either on the left side that you already thought you'd perfected before or in mirroring it on the right side. Eventually you will be faced with a choice: live with an imperfect drawing of a heart, or give up and move on, having failed at drawing a heart.