South Korea's #SKETCH Trend Turns Ordinary Objects Into Hand-Drawn Art

Key points

• People in South Korea are hand-drawing ordinary objects like mugs, headphones, and keys as part of an Anti-AI movement called #SKETCH.
• An illustrator's late-August post of her ceramic mug helped spark wider participation.
• The decentralized trend has moved into universities, offices, and cafés in Seoul and Busan.

In South Korea, a quiet practice known as #SKETCH has been spreading in recent weeks. People are drawing ordinary objects from their daily lives by hand — a mug they use every morning, old headphones, a set of keys, a worn notebook, a favorite shirt — and often posting the drawing next to a photo of the real thing.

Many describe the point in similar terms: the hand-drawn version restores a sense of presence and life to the object that generated images, in their view, lack.

Early Illustrator Posts

One of the earlier examples that drew attention was a post by an illustrator in late September. She drew her old ceramic mug, which she has used for several years, and noted that it took her over an hour because she wanted to capture a specific crack and the tea stains.

The post circulated in illustrator communities. Soon others followed: someone sketched their work headphones, another their desk, another the plant on their windowsill.

Beyond Professional Illustrators

By September the practice had moved beyond professional illustrators. Ordinary people began sharing their own drawings in personal accounts and group chats. Some bought inexpensive sketchbooks for the purpose.

In comments, users frequently wrote that an AI image of the same mug or the same keys looked clean and correct but empty — missing the particular scratches, wear, and signs of use that the real object has.

New Settings and Growth

SKETCH now appears in different settings. In university group chats, students draw their stationery and exchange the results. In some offices, colleagues have started bringing small personal items and asking each other for a quick sketch.

A number of small cafés and independent spaces in Seoul and Busan have put the drawings on their walls, sometimes next to the objects themselves or photographs of them.

Participants rarely frame what they are doing as a direct stand against AI. More often they talk about wanting to record a specific, imperfect thing with their own hands and, in doing so, make it feel more alive in a digital space where most images are now produced instantly.

The practice remains decentralized. There is no single organizer and no formal manifesto. Still, the number of such drawings and the conversations around them has grown noticeably in recent weeks.

Those watching it say SKETCH draws people in precisely because it is ordinary: participants are not producing separate artworks so much as looking again at things they already use and choosing to spend time on them.