Always Flip Your Work

About

Always Flip Your Work refers to a catchphrase used by digital artists and Photoshop users regarding flipping or mirroring one's artwork while working on it in order to find mistakes and inconsistencies they wouldn't have noticed. Although the technique became notable in 2022 on Twitter, mirroring ones artwork to spot errors has been prevalent in modern painting since the 20th century. The phrase became the subject of memes in 2022 when creators mirrored contextless image macros and captioned them with, "Always. Flip. Your Work."

Origin

Although the exact origin of the concept is unknown, Redditor dujango made a post to /r/photoshop^[1] on June 22nd, 2020, that shared a story regarding when they toured the house of deceased American painter Andrew Wyeth, known for paintings like Christina's World,^[2] painted in 1948 and on display at the MoMA. Dujango said in their post that Wyeth used to paint in front of a "giant mirror" in order to see the errors in his paintings.

Additionally, Twitter^[5] user MayflyMayDie claimed on May 18th, 2020, that animators at Disney used to always draw in front of a mirror (shown below). However, the origin of this knowledge is unknown.

On July 2nd, 2019, digital artist and painter Daniel Büsken made a post on his website^[3] titled, "Why Does My Art Look Weird When I Flip It?" He used examples of his artwork to show how, when flipped, his drawings look skewed or slanted. He attributed this disconnect to something called the "mere-exposure effect." "While drawing," he wrote, "the longer you see your drawing, the better it will seem to you. This prevents you from recognizing your own mistakes and you won’t notice when your drawing is slanted." This proved for him the importance of flipping one's work.

However, six months prior to Büsken's article, on January 28th, 2019, Twitter^[4] user IamTheTrev posted the first known use of the catchphrase online, flipping a drawing of Goku from the manga and anime Dragon Ball and captioning it, "Artists #1 tip …always flip your work." The tweet (shown below) received over 200 likes in two years.

Spread

On May 10th, 2021, Twitter^[6] user _riebunny captioned an image of a man with a skewed face with the catchphrase, directly stating, "always flip your work. / my work :" The tweet (shown below, left) received over 30 likes in 10 months.

In early 2022, the term became more relevant in memes on Twitter. This uptick in usage was inspired by a tweet from Twitter^[7] user barbie_e4 on February 28th, 2022, who flipped an image of Sprigatito from Pokémon and captioned it, "Sprigatito's artwork is driving me insane. Always. Flip. Your work." The tweet (shown below, right) received roughly 65,500 likes in 10 days. Many Twitter users thought that the flipped version looked the same as the non-flipped version, inspiring ironic iterations going forward.

Inspired by the aforementioned tweet, more creators on Twitter used the catchphrase. For instance, on March 1st, 2022, Twitter^[8] user VEEAITCHESS used barbie_e4's tweet as a phrasal template, replacing the word "Sprigatito" with, "This frame of Mr. Krabs," earning roughly 46,400 likes in nine days (shown below, left). On March 4th, 2022, Twitter^[9] user UltimaShadowX referenced the video game Castlevania, earning roughly 4,100 likes in six days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References