A couple years ago I started experimenting with hand lettering as a hobby.
It’s been a while since I’ve practiced, but recently I’ve found myself picking up and flipping through books on various types of lettering, sketching≤ and drawing while browsing bookshops.
As I’ve been thinking about revisiting and expanding on the hobby, I’ve also been thinking about how we might incorporate some of the practices and lessons from sketching into the rest of our creative work.
Every Masterpiece Starts with a Pencil
The first thing I bought when I first got into lettering was a set of coloured felt-tip calligraphy markers, the core tools of lettering and calligraphy.
The second thing I bought, however, was a set of pencils and a good eraser and it was with these that every piece got its start, long before the markers were uncapped.
Using the pencil, I would ever so lightly sketch out the rough outline piece in order to ensure the letters were spaced consistently and that the final image would fit onto the page. Invariably, this would take several attempts to get right, requiring me to erase multiple sketches before finally landing on the one that was ready to be reinforced and brought to life.
Penciling In Your Creative Projects
This step of sketching out our work applies to our creative careers as well.
We’re usually unaware we’re doing it, however, which can cause problems and frustrations down the road.
At this point in our lives and creative careers, most of us have worked in a series of different niches, platforms, mediums, products, businesses, and maybe even careers before ultimately moving on from many if not most of them.
Each of these can be thought of as a sketch of the life we were aspiring toward at the time.
In many cases, what causes us to move on from one of these endeavours is that as we’re sketching out an image, we realize it isn’t going to fit on the page we have in front of us – ie. the container that is our life, or more specifically, the life we want.
Maybe the sketch extends beyond the time we have available, maybe the finances don’t work, maybe completing this image means giving up or compromising on another one.
Or maybe we just don’t enjoy it all that much.
Whatever the reason, we decide that this sketch isn’t the one we want to commit to long-term and so we erase it and start again.
This process of sketching, erasing, and then re-sketching, in order to establish the outline of the image we want to bring to life, is a natural and necessary part of the process of building our creative lives.
Frustration arises, however, when we fail to understand this and we think that we’re supposed to get the image outlined correctly the first or second, or third (or tenth) time through.
Further complicating things for ourselves is that we often get seduced by an exciting new idea and jump in with both feet, starting to draw in the fine details of one part of the picture we have in our mind before first finishing the outline.
As a result, we often find ourselves committing a substantial amount of time and effort to a project… only to unexpectedly run out of space with the image only half-finished.
This is an outcome that could have been avoided if we would have taken the time upfront to roughly sketch out the image we have in our minds and see how (and if) it could fit onto the canvas we have available to us.
This means scoping out our personal projects much like we would for a client.
The excitement of a new idea can quickly be tempered by the realities of what it will take of us in terms of time, energy, capital, and stress to see it through.
And while it might seem counterintuitive, this is exactly what we want.
The ideas that have the greatest chance of success are those for which we’re able to maintain our initial excitement even after we’re aware of all the time, costs, and sacrifices that will be required to bring them to life.
It will likely take us a number of attempts before we land on an outline that meets this criteria and fits squarely within the boundaries of the page we have laid out for it. But taking the time upfront to get the general outline right before committing to the details can save us a lot in the way of frustration, sunk costs, and difficult decisions in the future.
Once the rough outline has been established, it’s time to refine it.
The Outline is Just a Guide
If you’ve ever sketched anything out before (especially if you, like me, are an amateur), you know that it’s incredibly hard to create a clean-looking image with a single stroke of your pencil.
After just one pass, the outline is full of subtle (and not so subtle) wobbles, the lines aren’t quite straight and the corners aren’t quite smooth.
There’s a tendency at this stage, when the sketch looks incomplete if not outright ugly, to give up and walk away, insisting that we’re just not capable of drawing.
But if we persist, and go back over our rough outline for subsequent passes, something interesting begins to happen.
While the first stroke of the pencil didn’t give us much in the way of anything that could be considered “art”, what it did give us was a guide and a reference point to which we can now anchor our future reinforcements of the general visual concept.
In overlaying subsequent strokes with the pencil, sticking to and reinforcing the guide line in some places, deviating from and correcting it in others, the dominant lines become straighter, the curves become smoother and the wobbles disappear.
What’s more, the image begins to take on depth and nuance as pressure gradients begin to appear, creating the impression of light and shadows.
With every reinforcement, the original outline recedes further into the background, either by being buried beneath subsequent layers of graphite or by being overshadowed by the bolder, darker correction lines that now draw the eye away from it.
The lesson for us as creators is that the point of the first draft is not to look anything like the final image.
The goal of the first draft of any of our work–be that a blog post, podcast, product offering, or even business–is to simply provide a guide for future reinforcement and correction.
The initial outline we create will never look as good as someone else who’s been adding to their sketch for years, adding layer over layer of corrections and reinforcements to their image.
The only way we can expect our sketches to achieve the same level of clarity and depth is to keep sketching.
There are no shortcuts here.
Sure, once you’ve developed into a skilled sketch artist capable of weaving magic with your pencil you may be capable of creating a clean and compelling image with a single stroke of your pencil. But achieving that level of skill takes years of dedicated practice.
Until then, the best option we as creators have available is to sketch and erase and sketch again until we land on a rough outline that fits into the space we have for it.
And then refine it, stroke by stroke by stroke.
Using this method, we don’t need to be master sketch artists to create a clear, compelling image.
We simply need to be persistent, and willing to continue sketching until the image on the page matches the image in our heads.
Explore how to navigate a creative life that matters
This article originally appeared in my weekly Creative Wayfinding Newsletter. Each issue is the product of a week of work, and contains something not available for sale.
A fresh perspective, a shot of encouragement when you need it most, and maybe even some genuine wisdom from time to time.
Each week, we explore a different facet of the question “How do we navigate the wilds of creating work that matters?”
It’s something I’m proud to create and I’d be honoured to share it with you.
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