Presto Sketching

A book to help you think and communicate better with drawing

Archives for August 2018

3 ways to add extra impact to figure sketches

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Do you ever wonder why some figure drawings have a way of jumping out at you and grabbing your attention? By trying out these ideas in your sketching, yours can do that too.

Figures help your audience put themselves in the picture

Whether you draw for fun or for a living (or both!), and you want to liven up your work by making it more visually interesting (or both!) adding figures and faces to your communications makes a big impact. Our eyes can’t help but lock into the eyes of another face, or the pose of a figure. Why? To seek meaning and affinity. My own pet theory is that we are constantly looking to see something of ourselves, or to learn more about ourselves, whenever we look at art in general, and visuals in particular.

Or as George Bernard Shaw said:

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

Figures can do the ‘heavy lifting’ for business audiences

You can also use this to great effect for visuals in business communication. Take a leaf out of the advertising playbook:

  • Do you want to attract staff to be part of some change at work? Show figures thinking about and/or reaching the same goals that they have.
  • Do you want to highlight a particular product/ service problem to stakeholders? Show people being impacted by that problem.
  • Do you want to sell a benefit of a new product or process? Show people being happy when they use it.

In this way, visuals of figures are doing some of the cognitive ‘heavy lifting’; in other words, making it easier for the audience to relate to what’s being communicated, and understand what their response is.

Good news: you can draw figures and faces yourself, that can add a lot more life and impact to your communications at work, and it’s easier than you think. We’re not aiming for anatomically correct works of art here; we’re just aiming for the essence of a figure, or an expression.

In this post, I’m going to focus on figures, and show you 3 secrets to drawing more impactful figures.

1. Draw the body language

Most communication to each other we pick up on is non-verbal, and a big part of that is through body language. This differs depending on context, but essentially: what we say with our bodies matters. So, the poses of the figures you draw matters, too!

The pose of the figure you draw instantly tells a story about what they’re doing, and maybe how they feel about what they’re doing. People rarely just stand bolt upright not doing anything; showing them moving around, slouching, sitting, lying down, or doing various things adds so much more vitality.

Compare the pairs of figures below. Even though they’re really simple, the second figure of each pair communicates a lot more, doesn’t it? Your figures will have more character and appear more real (no matter how simple they are), which makes your message much more compelling to your viewers.

2. Draw people in their natural habitat

Just like how people rarely stand bolt upright not doing anything, people tend to exist in some kind of environment, rather than just in a void. Think about where your figure is, not only what they’re doing. Add a hint of background, something simple to indicate where they are, and perhaps even what time of the day it is. Add a hint of an accessory or something to add a bit more interest, too. When you use your imagination in your sketching in this way, you’ll ignite your viewers’ imaginations too, which will make your message more memorable.

3. Dial up the drama

Use a trick that cartoonists do, and try exaggerating the poses of your figures. This works really well when you want to cut through the noise of other communications, and imply more drama and urgency.

Try it yourself

So, there you go. I hope these examples inspire you to try adding figures to whatever your draw, and to add more character, nuance, movement and visual story to your figures.

For more creative sketching, try SNAILS

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Looking to change up how you draw the same thing all the time? Or to boost the variety and style of what you draw? I got you: try this easy and effective SNAILS method.

If I got a dollar for every light bulb that I drew in my work, I’d be… well, I wouldn’t be rich, but let’s just say that the beers would be on me next time!

The point is: if you do any kind of sketching regularly, you might find yourself drawing the same old things in the same old ways, and you might be after some fresh ways to increase the visual variety of what you’re sketching. Whether it’s sketching for yourself (e.g. sketchnoting, urban sketching) or sketching for others (e.g. scribing, storyboarding, graphic recording, graphic facilitation), it can be easy to feel in a bit of a rut when it comes to what you draw and how you draw.

I got to this point fairly often a while back, so I started working on various ways I could spice up what I was drawing, to keep it more interesting and more meaningful. I’ve refined these various ways into an easy-to-remember method: SNAILS! I had the joy and honour of sharing this SNAILS technique as part of a workshop on using visual metaphor to explore and solve problems at the EuViz conference in Denmark, 2018.

SNAILS – An easy-to-remember set of sketching prompts

No, I’m not saying you draw snails on everything (although, hey, that might be your style). SNAILS stands for 6 creative prompts, or aspects you can think about changing whenever you draw something, to add more creativity and meaning.

SNAILS stands for:

  • Shape
  • Number
  • Angle
  • Identity
  • Line
  • Size

The SNAILS approach is a great way to take something you’ve already drawn and try a little bit of ‘visual first aid’ to help it visually ‘work’ a bit better. It’s also a good way to think more creatively about the topic, object, or concept you’re sketching. Let’s take a look at each of the 6 ways…

Shape

Changing the shape of an object can change its meaning, especially if it’s a visual metaphor for something. In the light bulb examples below, the shape of the glass changes to mimic other objects (e.g. a deflated balloon), to show what type of idea it represents.

Number

Sometimes adding more of the same object can add some nuance to what you’re showing, like one fish amongst a whole school of fish that looks different, or one bright idea amongst lots of ‘dim’ ones. A dozen fresh free-range ideas, anyone? 😉

Angle

Changing the angle – or your point of view – can enrich the meaning of the thing you’re drawing. It can give it more character (e.g. showing it viewed from slightly below looking up), or indicate that something is not quite right (showing an object upside down or backward), or movement (slanted to look like it’s moving fast).

Identity

If you’ve been following Presto Sketching for a while, you’ll probably know by now that I like putting faces on anything and everything. By putting a face on an inanimate object, you give that object an identity and an opinion. What type of face you give it obviously shows what personality or point of view it has, no matter how subtle or obvious the face is.

Line

This prompt is straight from art school. The nature of the line we draw says so much about what it is we’re drawing. Thin trembly lines indicate fragility or brittleness. Thick flowy lines indicate confidence. But you can take this further in so many different creative ways. Here are a few examples:

Size

Lastly, by playing with the size of what we draw, we can show how important it is in relation to what’s around it. For this to work, you usually need something else in the picture to give the particular object scale, for comparison.

Share your sketches!

I hope this SNAILS method has given you some ideas about adding some more variety to what you draw. Try it today, whether it’s on a whiteboard in a meeting, or in your sketchbook, or as part of live scribing. And as always, I’m keen to see how you use these methods in your own sketching, so feel free to share it on the socials and tag it with #prestosketching, or tag @prestosketching on or Instagram.