About

Draw the Squad is a fanart trend that involves drawing images with multiple characters in flamboyant, outrageous poses or precarious situations. The trend is usually started with a photograph of people posed uniquely, with the suggestion to artists to replicate with their own choice of characters, either from their OCs or their preferred fandoms. Occasionally, when only two characters are the main focus in the image being replicated, the caption instead reads "Draw your OTP." The meme has been seen used with screen caps, real-life images similar to Nightmares Fear Factory photos, and also original blank templates for the sole purpose of drawing.

Origin

The drawing meme first began appearing as "Draw your OTP," which was recorded in use on the Tumblr court-the-qunari on April 27th, 2015 in a post called "New OTP Challenge";^[5] which managed to receive over 34,000 notes in the following 10 months.^[5]

Spread

The earliest known instance of the phrase's usage was in a tumblr post by user garbageboi-archive, as the caption of an image of what appears to be a staged boyband album cover or press photo (shown below, left). The post gained over 62,000 notes in the following 8 months.^[3] On July 6th, 2015, a single topic blog titled Squad Poses^[1] was created for posting and reblogging a variety of different draw the squad images from many different fandoms.^[1] The blog quickly grew in popularity, reblogging posts such as queen-norge's July 13th post, which gained over 4,700 likes over the same period (shown below, right).

As of February 2016, a Pinterest gallery with dozens of submissions for the meme exists with 571 followers,^[2] while DeviantArt's search yields 833 results for 'draw the squad meme'.^[4]

Various Examples

Draw The OTP and the Third Wheel Best Friend

Draw The OTP and the Third Wheel Best Friend is an art challenge in which participants are requested to draw their favourite fictional pairing (also known as One True Pairing, or OTP for short) alongside a close character from the same universe; inspired by a picture of a male seen sneaking a drink from another girl's cup while she is busy kissing a different male (shown below, left). In these drawings, the drinking male represents a third wheel, the person remaining in a group of three out of which two are in a romantic relationship. The original picture can most likely no longer be traced back, and over time various versions and qualities have been spread, but searches show that the picture was already shared as early as 2007^[6][7] with increasing spread in the following few years.

On July 6th, 2015, Tumblr user Bumbleshark posted a "Draw The OTP" post featuring the specific image (shown above, right),^[8] starting a series of replies featuring pairings in the style of the photograph; which managed to gather over 128,000 notes as of September 2016.

Search Interest

External References