About

Draw My Life is a YouTube video fad in which people describe their life, or an aspect of it like their job or relationships, by drawing stick figures. The footage of the drawing process is then sped up for the video, with an added voice over explaning the artwork. Similar to the exploitable template Draw Your Life, these videos often depict how a person has grown and changed throughout their life.

Origin

The first Draw My Life video was uploaded by YouTuber and former Big Brother 11 housemate Sam Pepper^[2] on January 8th, 2013. In the five minute video, Pepper utilized an erasable white board to draw the story of his life from when he was born to when he moved from England to Los Angeles in December 2012. As of April 2013, Pepper's video has accrued nearly 800,000 views. At the end of the video, he tagged fellow YouTubers Louis Cole^[3] and Caspar Lee^[4] to complete the task as well, both of whom completed their Draw My Life videos in January 2013.

Spread

Despite the specific tags, the first YouTuber to make their own Draw My Life video was Emily Bland^[5], who posted her video on January 11th, 2013. She chose to complete her drawings in a graph paper notebook with a marker.

On March 2nd, 2013, Shane Dawson uploaded a Draw My Life video, revealing details about his verbally and physically abusive father as well as his path to becoming a YouTube partner. The video was featured on the Viral Viral Videos blog^[6] the following day.

On April 3rd, Pinterest parody blogger The Pintester^[7] pointed out the YouTube trend and posted a drawn video about the history of the blog. On April 11th, 2013, Philip DeFranco's Draw My Life video was chosen as the top YouTube video of the day on What's Trending.^[8] The same day, New Media Rockstars shared five of their favorite Draw My Life videos^[9], sharing an additional five^[10] on April 12th based on comments from the first article.

Notable Examples

As of April 2013, there are more than 850,000 search results for "Draw My Life" on YouTube.^[1] Many well-known YouTubers have participated in the fad including (clockwise from top left) Ryan Higa, PewDiePie, Jenna Marbles and Anthony Padilla of Smosh.

Search Interest

External References