Drawing Circles

Summary

Have you ever sat by a pond just as a few rain drops started to fall? There before our eyes we watch nature draw near perfect circles, rings rippling out from the center of the drop. From Apelles to Rembrandt to Picasso, it’s been argued that no human is capable of drawing a perfect circle freehand. Rembrandt painted a self-portrait with him standing between two circles as if to suggest otherwise. There are some examples on YouTube of people drawing near perfect circles, but always using their shoulder or elbow or wrist bone or a finger joint as if the center of a compass to do so.

Nature needs no practice, no pen and ink, and no compass to create near perfect circles or circles in general: Saturn’s rings, the cross-section of a tree, the pupil of the human eye, the arc of a rainbow, the sun-disk rising each morning, setting each night.