Everyone Can Sketch: How Visual Thinking Will Drive Your Business And Meetings Forward
Sketching is not a skill you have to practice, but a language you can learn. Just like learning French, German or English, sketching can take time to master but everyone can understand it. It is a visual language that can summarise, explain or translate complex ideas into simpler concepts that everyone around the table can understand.
Sketching is translingual and lifts the barrier of complexity. It is a language that can be understood by everyone around the world and overcomes the complex niche terms specific to different areas of expertise. Although the old adage says "a picture is worth a thousand words", you can construct that picture with a good sketch or drawing.
When you are sketching or drawing your ideas, it is important to build the story and convey the core ideas, visual explanation and clarification to the reader (the audience is called a reader because sketching is a visual language). However, the most important thing is to remember that everyone can sketch! Sketching/drawing is all about courage: allocate a bit of time to it and don't be afraid to fail the first time you give it a try.
How to sketch – A quick guide
It's impossible to teach drawing from a text-based article, but here are a few basic tips and tricks.
Start by drawing stick figure landscapes. Try this first as you are working on your own, then expand it to one-on-one meetings, and eventually to whole meeting rooms.
Once you have started with this and are comfortable with it, you can improve on your sketches by using depth. The easiest way to do this is by sketching out the whole picture in a light grey colour or with a fineliner pen, then drawing over the basic sketch with a dark marker and applying some colour.
Afterwards, you can try to mimic posters, products, designs, etc., and turn to other sources of inspiration.
Remember to start small, practice, and end big. Think of it as starting off your sketching journey by simply vamping up your meeting notes, and only later drawing in large meetings with a public audience.
Sources for inspiration
During your journey, let yourself be inspired by other people's work. We recommend the following sources:
- YouTube is a good place for anyone to start. Watch this video and learn to sketch emotional cartoon faces.
- Visual Thinking: Empowering People and Organisations by Willemien Brand is our go-to "bible" whenever we need to teach people how to draw. It provides a complete description of why, how and with what you can structure business meetings through sketching.
- Drawabox is an online course on product and environment sketching, which starts with the basics of sketching and finishes with complex drawings.
- How to Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects and Environments by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling is an in-depth book that explains how to draw anything your heart desires in a structured way.
Please don't hesitate to book a meeting with TPA if you are interested in learning to sketch and finding out more about its uses or benefits. We can aid you with sketching workshops and can also teach you how to implement it into your day to day business management.
