Presto Sketching

A book to help you think and communicate better with drawing

Fun and creativity

Draw more creatively with FLARE

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If you want to find ways to draw topics more creatively, or you feel like you’re in a bit of a rut drawing things the same way all the time, then the FLARE prompts are for you.

How do you draw a person? Or a building? Or a tree? There are lots of ways to draw real-world objects, and we can use curiosity, observation and practice to draw these in satisfying ways.

A group of simple drawings depicting common objects like a lightbulb and cloud

Some simple images of simple real-world objects

But how do you draw more complex and abstract concepts, like ‘innovation’, ‘strategy’, or ‘diversity’? It’s much harder, isn’t it?

A couple of years ago, Axelle Vanquaillie (a masterful visual practitioner, facilitator and leadership coach, and owner of the company Visual Harvesting) and I were discussing how to help people in our training workshops with this common challenge: how do you illustrate abstract concepts in more creative ways? We realised that many of us anchor on to one idea, and find it hard to go beyond that. My design background has always taught me that it’s always better to use divergent thinking, and that the way to have one great idea is to have 100 so-so ideas first. 

With that in mind, we pooled our knowledge, sketched a lot, and swapped stories of various training sessions we had run and examples we’d come up against. And that’s how FLARE was born.

We’ve since used FLARE with a variety of different groups in training sessions, with a variety of levels of confidence in drawing, and it has always helped everyone be more creative and get more satisfying results from their drawing. And now it’s your turn to learn!

A photo of a participant in one of our training sessions reflecting on the experience of using FLARE to illustrate a tricky concept

A participant in one of our training sessions reflecting on the experience of using FLARE to illustrate a tricky concept

What is FLARE?

FLARE is a set of prompts you can use to help you move beyond the way you’re used to thinking about a topic you want to draw, and think about it in new ways. What you get is a much greater range of ideas that you can then refine and combine into one final image.

A drawing of the process of coming up with ideas without FLARE and with FLARE

The FLARE process gets you more initial ideas from which to create your final visual

FLARE stands for:

  • Feel – What does it feel like? What emotions does this trigger?
  • Look – What does it look like? What are the real-world objects at play?
  • Another word – What’s another word (or words) to describe this?
  • Result – What is the result of this? What is the end-game of this topic or scenario? Is there a benefit realised? Or a negative impact that might happen?
  • Experience – What is the experience of this? Is it something where there are several steps involved? Or several devices, places, people or roles involved?
A drawing of the word FLARE with text expanding on what each letter stands for

How to use FLARE

It’s really important to understand that when you use FLARE, you don’t try to come up with The Perfect Image first. What we’re doing here is generating lots of different ideas first, to help us explore the topic in better ways, and then we go back and refine and combine our best ideas.

1. Write your topic in the middle of a big page

Start with a topic – especially a complex or abstract topic – you have in mind to draw. It’s best if it doesn’t include any clichés or existing visual metaphors. If it does, try to restate it in a clearer way. Then, write it down in the middle of a big blank page.

Now, write the letters of FLARE around it. We’re going to make a mindmap. You can also do this as a grid if you like; the main thing is to give yourself plenty of space to write first, and then draw your ideas.

In this example, I’m going to go with “Teams struggle to understand each other”…

A drawing of a prompt in the middle, surrounded by the letters FLARE around the outside

2. Ask yourself the first FLARE prompt and draw your ideas

The first FLARE prompt is F: “What does it feel like?” Too often, concepts are – well – too conceptual, and it’s easy to forget that whatever the concept is, it probably affects people in ways that might actually be relevant to capture. Jot down some words that describe how your topic feels.

A drawing with a prompt in the middle surrounded by the letters FLARE

3. Jot down ideas for the other four prompts

Repeat step 2, and write down any ideas you come up with for the other four prompts. Allow each prompt to help you think about the topic in new ways, from new perspectives. You should have a set of descriptions around your original topic.

A drawing with a prompt in the middle surrounded by the letters FLARE

Don’t worry if you can’t think of several things for each of the five prompts. Some prompts won’t suit the topic as well as others. If you get stuck, just move on.

4. Draw lots of different ideas based on what you wrote

Now we get drawing! Go back over everything you wrote, and do some quick sketches to capture what you wrote. Remember, this isn’t about trying to draw the One Perfect Image now, or even to draw the entire topic or concept in one go; this is still just brainstorming.

A drawing with a prompt in the middle surrounded by the letters FLARE

As I sketched various ideas based on what I’d written for this example, I made sure not to self-edit as I went. The more rough sketches, the better.

5. Refine and combine

Now comes my favourite part! This is where you channel your inner editor, look over all your various sketches from across the prompts, and choose the ones you think are most relevant, most compelling, and/or most insightful. There might be one that just nails it on its own, but typically there are a few. 

A drawing with a prompt in the middle surrounded by the letters FLARE

As I went back over what I’d written and sketched in this example, the bridge idea really resonated with me, as well as showing several different languages. The going-around-in-circles also appealed to me.

Now, draw something that unites those several good ideas into one single cohesive picture.

Two different drawings illustrating the prompt

As you can see here, I landed on two different ideas. The first idea to illustrate the topic of “Teams struggle to understand each other” uses speech balloons and thought balloons… No surprises there, but positioning them on a roundabout double arrow added some more meaning. As I thought about my second idea with the bridges, it occurred to me that it could look interesting if either ‘side’ basically built their own different bridge, and even though both bridges are complete, they never meet in the middle. This speaks to the inward-looking nature that some teams have when they struggle to communicate with one another.

Which one do you prefer? What do you think you would draw for this topic?

Some tips to help

Here are a few other things to consider about the FLARE method

  • Trust the process! Too often we’re hard-wired to try to draw just one image that works the first time. Embrace the fact that it’s better to create and explore many options first, and then you’ll have more to choose from. And who knows, you might have some a-Ha moments about the concept itself you’re trying to draw along the way, as well as how to draw it.
  • Not all prompts have to be present in the final image. Try not to force an image that includes something that speaks to every prompt. It’s totally fine if your final image ends up just being about how your topic feels. It’s also fine if you land on an image that combines feel with look and result.
  • Feel free to skip step 3 if you like, and jump straight to drawing your answers to each prompt. I put this step in to help you if you’re more comfortable with writing as well as drawing.
  • Not all prompts will make sense all the time and that’s okay. They’re just prompts; if you’re stuck on a prompt because it doesn’t seem to work for your topic or context, just move on.

Taking FLARE further

I encourage you to give FLARE a go the next time you need to illustrate a tricky topic, or if you want to try illustrating a familiar topic in a more creative way. The FLARE prompts help you think deeper about the topic, and maybe help you to clarify your point of view, too.

With that in mind, there are other ways you can use the FLARE prompts.

  • Group drawing – FLARE is fun in pairs! Two heads are better than one, as they say, and if you try these prompts with someone else, you’ll both benefit from each other’s different experiences and points of view.
  • Facilitation questions – If you run any meetings at work, you probably know that great facilitation is often about asking great questions, to help your group have a better conversation. The FLARE prompts might give you ideas about how to enrich your next conversation, by helping everyone think about their topic in different ways.
  • Problem solving – As Charles Kettering is said to have said, “A problem well stated is half solved”. So often, a great solution lies in the way a problem is articulated in the first place. Using the FLARE prompts can help you and your team approach any problem or challenge from a different point of view, to perhaps reveal a hidden solution.

Feel free to drop me a line and let me know if this helps your drawing. 🙂

Here’s how AI visualises your company’s vision

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UPDATE: I originally wrote this post in August 2022. AI-generated images have obviously come a long way since then. Please read this post with this in mind…

I had a play with MidJourney to find out if it would steal my job as a visual practitioner or not, and the results were – well – comforting…

Technology has always pushed our craft forward

Ever since we humans first started using stones rather than our hands to cut and shape things, technology has been advancing our capabilities. History is often marked by huge jumps in progress, thanks to one innovation unlocking more innovations. New technologies have always changed our impact on the world, on each other, and the way we think about ourselves, and our place in this world (and beyond).

Granted, some technologies have been pretty benign (I mean, bricks are a pretty awesome invention, if you think about it). Others have been ultra-disruptive (hello Gutenberg Press, the steam engine, nuclear fission, the Internet).

Think impact, not job

And technology has always shifted our thinking and assumptions of what any certain job should be. If you have a fixed job-oriented mindset, then you’re up for a world of anxiety, because it’s only a matter of time before any new technology challenges, disrupts, or even completely removes the need for that job.

But if you have a more open impact-oriented mindset, then new technologies will always present new opportunities for you to make your mark in the world in new and better ways.

How will AI-powered image generators affect the visual practice field?

In recent years, AI and smart programs have been advancing in leaps and bounds, and every new app seems to make yet another industry really nervous about their livelihoods. The release of AI-powered image generators like DALL-E, DALL-E Mini, Imagen, and MidJourney is certainly making a lot of people in the fields of visualisation, illustration, art, design and photography pretty twitchy.

And no doubt about it, the images these service generate are pretty amazing. Here’s what you get when you prompt it with the word “happiness”:

An AI-generated image of 'happiness', depicting a smoky-looking meadow with flowers
Happiness – generated by MidJourney

There’s loads of commentary going on about what this means for the visual practice field (i.e. illustration, art, graphic recording, visual storytelling), but rather than just add more words to that, I thought I’d run a little experiment, to show some evidence to us as a community of what to be twitchy (or not twitchy) about…

An AI-augmented visualisation experiment: illustrating company visions

I thought I’d get the AI-powered image generator MidJourney to illustrate some company visions, to see what it created, and to see what I could learn from that.

Why company visions? I help teams gain clarity and direction through visualising their complex and often ambiguous and esoteric information and ideas. So, if I were to go toe-to-toe against MidJourney, I thought I’d choose something that we can all reference, as a starting point.

Using MidJourney is a bit tricky; it uses Discord as its interface, which means it’s easy to lose your creations (MidJourney’s creations?) amongst hundreds of other images going on in the same big stream of messages. There are tons of others in the same channel, and most of what they’re prompting MidJourney for are for pictures of cyberpunk cities, elves, hot medieval chicks and robots. Kids today, hey.

A screenshot of the Discord interface
Creating MidJourney-generated images within the Discord interface

Basically, you type imagine/ and then whatever text description you want as the prompt for the image generator. It then generates 4 ‘draft’ images. From there, you can opt for a variation on any one image, or select one image for it to create a final, larger, more detailed piece.

Here’s what MidJourney generated for Nike’s vision: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world“. As you can see in these shots, the images start as broad shapes and colours, and gain detail and specificity over about a minute.

Two AI-generated images of Nike's vision statement
Rendering…. rendering…
Another set of AI-generated images depicting Nike's vision statement
The finished render of Nike’s vision, visualised

What about Amazon? “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online”:

A set of AI-generated images depicting Amazon's vision statement
These look like album covers of music I’d like to listen to!

You wondering what Tesla’s vision “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy” looks like? Here you go:

Another set of AI-generated images depicting Tesla's vision statement
Whoosh! Go-faster lines!

I dig the other-worldly-looking windmills in the lower-left version.

LinkedIn’s vision statement, “Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce”:

Another set of AI-generated images depicting LinkedIn's vision statement
I’m all for employment opportunity for people with 3 legs

What can we make of these images?

Any image generation algorithm is written by at least one person, and drawing upon (pun intended) a vast collection of existing (human-made) images of various kinds to create any new image. Looking at these images (above), there seem to be some decisions about colour and composition that would have been informed by that collection, and perhaps the visual texture and form also.

The objects and shapes themselves rendered in these images seem pretty generic… but then again the prompts (i.e. the vision statements) use pretty generic language. Bland words yield bland images. That’s on the vision statements, not on the AI.

So, what does this mean? A few things jump out for me:

The images are novel, but not original

Every AI image is re-sampling images that already exist. Can original art come from existing art? Yes, absolutely. Music by DJs like Moby re-sampled existing tracks, but is still fresh and original; it’s music we haven’t heard before. But these are just derivative, by definition.

The people who make AI image generators steal from the original creators

Speaking of images that already exist, the images feeding the generator have been taken off the internet without permission and without payment, and there is no attribution given to the artists who created the original images. This is theft, plain and simple.

Which is not cool.

What’s more, it breeds the mindset that most people have about images online, and that is if it’s on the internet, it must be free. Not so.

The fight against this behaviour is on. For example, Getty Images is suing AI art generator Stable Diffusion in the US for copyright infringement. This article on The Verge is a great exploration about the issues at stake.

The magic is in our interpretation, not in their generation

The introduction of the camera catalysed a wild explosion of new thought about art, and a range of modern art movements, like impressionism, expressionism, surrealism, and cubism. We (i.e. human artists) reacted to this new technology, and intentionally challenged existing ideas of aesthetics, technique and composition, and created whole new ways of expressing ourselves visually.

AI-generated images don’t intentionally challenge existing patterns and compositions, or re-interpret existing metaphors or existing visual treatments of subject matter. The algorithms are serving up a range of calculated renderings, and then we choose what ‘stands out’ and what does not. Any freshness, originality, or aesthetic value we ascribe to any of these images comes from us, not the AI.

We are still doing the synthesis

These AI algorithms ape some of what we intuitively do when thinking how to visualise something, but not all of it. In Presto Sketching, I wrote about how we do that. Generally we:

  1. Understand – We check that we ‘get’ the concepts that need to be visualised
  2. Synthesise – Then, our clever brains make a multitude of choices about what those concepts mean, how are they connected, what to include, what not to include, what to emphasise, how to appeal to our intended audience, is there a metaphor at play, and so on.
  3. Translate – Then, we think about how to visualise and communicate that synthesis. This is steered by our own memory and experiences, our visual diet, our confidence and competence in being able to render something (on paper or pixels).

I think AI-powered image generators do an amazing job of #3 Translate, but they can’t do #1 Understand or #2 Synthesise. You can see this when you look at the visual rendering of the vision statements above; yes, the text is very generic, so all it can do is algorithmically reach for a ‘stock’ object that fits a word, or render a ‘stock’ abstract symbol that represents a concept (e.g. the ‘go faster’ lines) for “innovation”).

Bottom line? It’s an illegal type of brush

As long as we demonstrate understanding and synthesis, I think we still have a massive edge over AI-powered image generation. I see it as a new type of brush that we can paint with, and it’s up to each of us and our conscience whether or not we use it. What ‘colours’ do you put on the brush? How do you wield the brush? It depends on the prompts you use.

But this (to me) calls for three pursuits:

Broaden your visual diet. Whatever your role is, intentionally go after a richer variety of visual stimuli. Go to nature, seek out different kinds of First Nation art, go through old art books… but do what it takes to feed your eyeballs and your brain with a wider range of visual layouts, colours, textures, treatments, and subject matter.

Cultivate your creativity. Intentionally colour outside the lines. Create things for the sheer heck of it, not for money or likes or any reward. Be impulsive. Swap out a familiar tool with an unfamiliar tool. Set yourself a new constraint for each project.

Example: Here’s what MidJourney makes with my nonsense prompt: “yuopoyy at bhlkip asd”:

AI-generated images for a nonsense text prompt
Behold, my own subconscious…

Interesting, hey?

Skill up in synthesis. Cultivate and improve your skills of listening and observing, questioning, empathising, critical thinking, (re)framing, (re)classifying, (re)grouping, (re)wording, and resampling.

And last thing: Check out the subtle art of prompt whispering. 😉

What are your thoughts? I’m keen to know!

How to draw mandalas

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Have you ever wanted to try drawing mandalas? It’s more fun and rewarding than you probably think, and the results are probably better than what you imagine, whether you think you have no drawing skill at all, or you’re a seasoned sketcher.

If you’re after a free and easy way to relax, centre yourself, and practise a bit of mindfulness, it’s hard to go past drawing a mandala. It’s a great way to focus on something, and it’s not the kind of drawing that needs to be ‘correct’. But be warned! you might find it a bit addictive… 😉

Mandalas have deep significance in Hinduism and Buddhism, and represent the universe, from its grandest through to its tiniest sense (mandala is actually Sanskrit for ‘circle’). The act of making mandalas has always been used for focusing attention, for establishing ‘space’ in the mind and spirit, and for meditation. Even destroying mandalas has deep spiritual significance in Tibetan Buddhism, as a way of emphasising how fleeting life is. They’re also incredibly popular as decoration, which makes them perfect for wall art, greeting cards, tattoos, and so on.

Draw your mandala as a gift from you to you

Drawing a mandala can be really fun, relaxing and meditative, so long as you leave your inner critic in its playpen, and treat it as random discovery rather than a piece of performance. Just like zentangling, you start simple, and then take it wherever you and your imagination want to go, and make it as simple or as complex as you want it to be.

Materials

You can make mandalas out of just about anything; from coloured sand (like the Tibetan Buddhist mandalas), to paper, candy, plants, crochet, salt, even people. But for now, let’s stick to good ol’ pen and paper, shall we? You can start with as little as this:

  • Plain office paper
  • Pencil or black marker
  • Coloured markers / art markers of your choice

You can draw your mandalas totally freehand if you like, but if you want them to be super neat, and you feel like you need some more structure to work with, you’ll want these:

  • A compass
  • A ruler
  • A protractor

Another good idea is to use polar graph paper that you can print out and use as a guide. You can either draw directly on the graph paper, or place it under the piece of paper you’re drawing on as a guide.

Setting up your mandala structure

Start with a point in the middle of your paper, and use a ruler and pencil to draw lines through the middle, horizontally and vertically. Next, draw several circles with your compass using that point at the centre of the paper where the lines intersect. Try to draw the circles at various random diameters, rather than a regular pattern:

Now it’s time to think about how many sections you would like in your mandala. Drawing it in quarters is perfectly fine, but let’s go for eighths. Two 45-degree lines going through the same middle point should give you 8 equal sections across the circles.

You should have something that looks like this:

Starting your mandala

The hardest stroke is the first one, so go ahead and jump in by drawing a simple shape from the very centre of your circles, outward to the first circle guideline you drew. Here’s my first set of shapes:

It’s really important to take your time. Enjoy it. Don’t rush it. Draw each line deliberately and neatly. You’ll get a much better result. Also, do one type of line or shape all the way around before starting the next type of line or shape. Resist the temptation to go galavanting off doing a whole segment, and then trying to come back to the centre again; it won’t look as good.

Adding variety and imagination

As you continue drawing your mandala, don’t try to think too hard about it; just let the pen and your imagination go where they want to go. This is such a great example of intuitive drawing.

You can change up the type of shapes that you’re drawing, or stick to a theme, it’s completely up to you. Try circles, triangles, leaves, straight lines, curved lines and spirals…

As the mandala gets bigger, you might like to experiment with longer lines and larger shapes, like these petal shapes that end up overlapping each other:

At any point, you can go back over your mandala and add some thicker lines, and other shapes and details if you like:

Finishing your mandala

Sooner or later you’ll wonder when it’s time to stop! Getting to the edge of the paper is probably far enough, so try to leave a bit of a gap, like you can see here:

How much detail you put in is up to you. Here’s my finished mandala below, just in black marker, and again once I’d gone through it and added some yellow colour:

Try it yourself

I hope you liked seeing this mandala take shape, and I hope it gives you a nudge to try drawing one yourself. Start small, start simple, experiment with shapes and colours, and let it be fun and relaxing! Oh, and if you’re after other ideas for simple ways to get sketching, try these 10 ideas to get you inspired to sketch.

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.

Fun emoji facts

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Emoji number plates?! Level up your emoji mojo with these 15 nuggets of tasty tips, tricks and trivia about our favourite adorable little pictures.

To state the bleeding obvious, emoji are a thing. In a BIG way. Regular Presto Sketching newsletter readers might know that I have a soft spot for emoji. They’re an amazing, fun and flexible way to express ourselves visually. And emoji are pretty much our main international language; around 95% of humans online are now using these little characters.

So I thought I’d make your day with 15 nuggets of emoji trivia and links. Let’s get into it, shall we?

1. We are sending 60 million of them to each other on Facebook, and 5 billion on Facebook Messenger alone, EV. VER. REE. DAY. Over on Instagram, nearly half of all comments and captions contain emoji, and users from Finland 🇫🇮 are at the top of the table, using emoji in over 60% of text!

2. The most popular emoji (according to this Brandwatch report 📝) are the ‘Face with tears of joy’ 😂 (#1 on Instagram and Twitter), Heart ❤️, Sparkles ✨ and ‘Loudly crying face‘ 😭. And surprise surprise, most popular emoji differ in different countries. France, for example, is rather fond of the wink 😉, but Italy and Spain take it a bit further with a wink and a kiss!  😘

Top 10 most used emojis in the first half of 2021

3. Emoji were invented by Shigetaka Kurita in Japan, and were first seen on Japanese mobile phones in 1999. This interview with Kurita is brilliant, and his first sketches of emojis are absolute gold:

Shigeta Kurita’s original sketches for the first emoji set

The original set of 176 emoji now resides in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.🗽

4. Shigetaka Kurita’s favourite emoji? The heart ❤️. Awww.

5. The original smiley 😃 (perhaps the first emoji?) was invented by ad man and graphic designer Harvey Ross Ball in 1963. He was commissioned to create a graphic to raise morale among the employees of an insurance company after a series of difficult mergers and acquisitions. Ball finished the design in less than 10 minutes and was paid $45 for his work 💸.

6. Oxford Dictionaries named ‘Face with tears of joy’ 😂 its 2015 Word of the Year.

7. World Emoji Day is 17 July. Why? Because that’s the date shown on the ‘calendar’ emoji for Apple and Google 📅 (but not for Samsung, Twitter, WhatsApp and other platforms) And does World Emoji Day have an anthem you can sing along to? Why yes. Yes it does. 🎶

8. Do you want to know what emojis are being used on Twitter? In real time? Of course you do.

9. What about those times when you want to include emoji, but you’re in front of a regular keyboard? Got you covered! Head to getemoji.com or iemoji.com and copy-and-paste 📋 emojis to your heart’s content  👍.

10. Some emoji can have multiple meanings, or different meanings in different cultures. Turns out that this symbol ♻️ means ‘recycle’ in Western culture, but is commonly used for ‘share’ in Islamic  ☪️ cultures, like when people post prayers on social media, and encourage others to share. If ever in doubt of the meaning of what you’re sending, best to check using emojipedia.org.

11. Speaking of checking, it’s worth knowing that not all platforms use the same emoji for the same thing, so you might be inadvertently confusing receivers of your messages. For example, the ‘Grinning face with smiling eyes‘ might look like this 😬, or like this 😄, depending on the platform you view it on…. and depending on what you’re trying to say, it could carry a very different tone!

From Investigating the Potential for Miscommunication Using Emoji

12. You can read the entire Moby Dick story in emoji. I can’t wait to see the CliffsNotes of that. 😂😂😂

13. Emoji are being used to evade monitoring and censoring. The Chinese government regularly squashes anything in social media that would appear to be a threat to communist rule, like the growing women’s movement in China. For instance, China’s Twitter-like service Weibo shut down the Feminist Voices account, and then private messaging app WeChat did the same. FYI, Weibo also blocks the #metoo hashtag. But Chinese feminists found a way around it, by using #RiceBunny in its place along with the rice bowl and bunny face emoji. When spoken aloud the words for “rice bunny” are pronounced “mi tu,” a homophone for “me too” that cleverly evades detection.

(Side note: iPhone users in China are missing one specific emoji on their emoji keyboard that shows on all others: the flag for Taiwan.)

14. And what about emoji on number plates? That would be brilliant, if only it were true. As an April fools joke in 2016, the Honda website published a news item that they were introducing emoji number plates in the UK. But hey, you never know… 😉

Would you like an emoji numberplate?

15. And so, what lies ahead for us in Emoji-Land? If the latest incarnation of emoji and 3D technology are anything to go by, expect more and more animations, face filters, and other facial customisations on your messaging apps and elsewhere. The launch of Apple’s iPhone X brought with it the TrueDepth camera and Animoji, which simply has to be seen to be believed.

It’s worth having a play with these apps, just to get a feel for how your own face can morph into all sorts of expressive, entertaining — and in some cases VERY CREEPY — avatars and whatnot:

  • 💃 Gabsee: Put your 3D avatar in the real world
  • 😮 Mirror AI: Turn your selfie into an emoji
  • 🎤 MyIdol: I had loads of fun creeping out my family and friends with this one… you’ve been warned!

Emoji will be more and more inclusive and instructive

Expect emoji to also bring more of our beautiful diverse world to our keyboards, and therefore to our mindsets. The upcoming Unicode version 11 includes faces with red hair and curly hair, superheroes, more body parts, and more accessories. I think it’s actually good to see a ‘woman’s shoe’ that is flat-soled and blue, rather than the stereotypical (and some might say overly-sexualised) red stiletto heel.

Some new emoji actually take advantage of the way they can transcend language as we know it, especially for people who are illiterate. Earlier this year, Unicode approved the addition of the mosquito emoji, which can be used as a way to better describe mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria and Zika.

And don’t forget: anyone can submit an emoji proposal. What would you submit?

Parting note: use emoji as inspiration ✨in your own sketching

As I’ve mentioned in Chapter 5 of Presto Sketching (Sketching Faces and Expressions), sketching emoji is a great way to broaden the range of facial expressions you can render in your own visual communication. Try copying the emoji that you see on your device today into a notebook, and then try incorporating them into other sketching and visualising you do. Before long, all of your sketches will have a lot more vitality and character! 👋

Foundation lines: the killer technique for better sketching

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If you struggle to draw from imagination – or even what’s right in front of you! – the foundation lines drawing technique is made for you. Try it yourself, and gain greater confidence and ability, with more satisfying results.

[UPDATED] Quite a while ago I was filling my Presto Sketching Instagram account with a big collection of 4-step how-to practice drawings, like this one:

How to draw a bowl of ramen in 4 steps

I started doing these ages ago, as a way to build a visual library of things that were (and still are) useful to mentally ‘reach for’ when sketching at work. This is handy for journey mapping, graphic recording, sketchnoting, storyboarding, or anything else where you need to communicate ideas and messages to others. I still do a lot of these during any training sessions I do about drawing, but especially back then I added a lot to Instagram, and then made an e-book out of 100 of them, called Draw in 4.

Draw in 4 e-book, available anywhere you buy your e-books

Extra plug: If black-and-white e-book doesn’t suit your style, you can also get the deluxe colour PDF version of Draw in 4 here.

These 4-step drawings use a technique in Chapter 6 of the Presto Sketching book, called foundation lines (or construction lines) as a way to increase ability and confidence in sketching. And it goes a bit like this:

  • Look at the object you want to draw, and in your mind’s eye, break it into basic geometric shapes. I recommend doing this with objects in front of you first, before trying to do it from imagination.
  • Draw those basic shapes with a light-coloured pencil or marker (or a very thin marker). The shapes themselves shouldn’t be perfect; it’s perfectly fine to draw them a few times, to help you place them right where you want them to go. My dearest old art teacher used to call this “finding the line”.
  • Once you’re happy with the main shapes, draw in any more lines that help to give you more guidelines to draw over, such as the lines indicating the ramen contents and chopsticks in the example above.
  • Now, start drawing with your darker marker, over the top of those foundation lines. You’ll see how the dark marks spring forward, and the lighter, coloured lines recede.
  • Finish your drawing with any detail you like. Sometimes it’s nice to add some shading or colouring using the colour you used for the foundation lines.

Nice, hey? By breaking anything down into shapes first, you help your mind observe, deconstruct, and then reconstruct the object for you to draw, to get a much more satisfying result.

I love this technique because it gets you to exercise a part of drawing that doesn’t get enough air-time: your observation skills. In other words, really seeing and paying attention to what you want to draw is just as valuable as how you end up drawing it.

Once you sketch anything using foundation lines a couple of times, your mind’s eye automagically ‘sees’ the foundation lines on the paper, tablet or whiteboard, and you can then draw whatever the object is with more confidence. You can also develop your own style, based on a more solid understanding of what it is you want to show.

I hope these examples tempt you to try this method yourself, the next time you draw. Before long, you’ll be able to sketch up an ice cream, a moped, a kraken — or whatever it is you want to draw — in no time at all!

3 ways to add extra impact to figures

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Whether you draw for a living, or you just want to increase engagement in your work by making it more visual (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, to seek meaning and affinity.

As well as adding figures, we can also pay attention to enriching those figures with more character and meaning, to boost the impact of your communication:

  • Are you communicating a plan or strategy to the organisation? Add figures to show where and how different teams ‘fit into the picture’.
  • 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.

Good news: you can draw more interesting figures and faces yourself, 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 of what we communicate to each other 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!

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

Think about where your figure is, and 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. Add a hint of an accessory or something to add a bit more interest, too. When you use your imagination in your sketching, you’ll ignite your viewers’ imaginations, which will make your message more memorable.

3. Dial up the drama

Use a trick that cartoonists know really well, 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 drama and urgency.

Your turn

My challenge to you: if you’ve never included your sketches in a presentation or on a whiteboard, try it out, and let me know how it goes! You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the positive attention it gets. And if you’re pretty seasoned at drawing figures at work, then think about how you can add more body language, habitat and drama, for added impact.

Have fun with it!

Easy ways to show more diversity in your sketches

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Life is full of all kinds of people, and your sketches can be too, with these ideas and examples.

Do you want your presentations and business communications to be more inclusive, and show more diversity, but you don’t want to use those cheesy contrived multi-racial stock photos?

Well, help is here! Let’s look at simple ways to sketch diversity in simple figures and faces for your presentations, and other things like whiteboard drawings in meetings, user interface designs, journey maps, and storyboards.

Let’s back up a minute. What do I mean by ‘diversity’? Rather than every figure in your drawing being a white male, I mean showing a variety of figures and faces, in terms of gender, age and life stage, ethnicity and sociodemographic background. This makes your communications much more inclusive.

“Whoah, Ben!” you might be gasping, “That’s a tall order! I can barely draw a figure that looks human, let alone a variety of humans!” Good news – it’s easier than you think. Once you start doing some simple sketches like these (instead of using hilariously bad stock photography), the greater your confidence will be to share them and use them in your own work.

In sketching, detail and diversity go together

Look at the range of faces below. The more abstract a face, the less you need to worry about diversity, but the more detail you add, the more diversity — or lack thereof — will become an issue. Work on a sketching style (or fidelity) that’s got only a little bit of detail; that way, you can suggest diversity in easy, economical ways.

Think about head shape

All of the examples I show you here are using a low level of fidelity; simple lines, no mouths, that sort of thing. This is great for anything from whiteboard drawings in meetings, to slide presentations and design work. Firstly, think about the shapes of the heads you draw. Almond-shaped heads with slightly pointy chins appear more feminine, squarer-shaped heads appear more masculine. Weird-shaped heads appear alien (hey, we’re being inclusive here, right?).

Hair’s the easiest way to variety

Drawing a variety of hair is the easiest way to indicate a variety of gender, age, and ethnicity. The picture below shows how adding just a simple line here and there can indicate things like plaits, a ponytail, or a bun (a man-bun, maybe?).

Once you master those simple lines, try drawing different shapes and varieties of hair as seen below: young spiky hair, long wavy feminine hair, emo hair with a streak through it, permed hair or balding hair. Close-cropped curly hair is also a good way to show someone whose gender is not identified by hair shape.

Beards, facial hair, and accessories like headbands, glasses, caps and other headwear are also great ways to indicate various nationalities, ethnicities, styles, and ages:

Little details mean a lot for different ethnicities and religions

It’s worth investing a little bit of time practising the faces below, so that you can include different ethnicities and religions in your drawings.

Seen here in the top row from left to right: a Sikh turban (the dastar), a Muslim skullcap (taqiyah or topi), two Indian head coverings (chunni), and an Indian woman with a tikka and sari. In the second row from left to right: a Buddhist wearing a Kasaya, an Asian female (the clothing is simple enough to be a Vietnamese áo dài or a Chinese cheongsam), two hijabs (simple enough to be Al-Amira or Shayla style), and a niqab.

Being more inclusive when sketching figures

Just like the faces above, the figures drawn here are really simple. By thinking about different ages and stages (childhood, parenting, older age), we can add a whole lot more variety to the figures we sketch. Here are just a few examples:

Think about different life situations (like parenthood), and different levels of ability and mobility as well.

One thing I like to think about when doing more inclusive figures like this: even if I do a figure with a walking stick or in a wheelchair, I never want that thing to define them as OLD or DISABLED. That’s a stereotype. Instead, I like to include a little detail to show some character in some way, so that they’re not perceived as a stereotype (e.g. old people use smartphones too! A woman in a wheelchair can zip along pretty fast!).

Similarly to the faces you saw, adding a bit of detail to indicate different dress can indicate more inclusivity too (in the case above, the female figure is wearing a sari and maybe a choli).

Your turn

I hope this helps you think about how you might be more inclusive in the way you draw, wherever you draw, and whatever you draw. And I bet you that everyone around you will really appreciate it, too.

Other things worth reading

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Would you like more of this sort of thing in your inbox every week to help you be more clever, and more valuable to your team? Then why not use that there box at the top right of this page, and sign up to the Presto Sketching newsletter. I send tips out weekly, and I make them as useful as possible.

3 ways to visualise psychological safety for better team performance

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Think about you and your team at work for a minute. How supportive would you say it is for everyone to speak their mind, try new things, and learn from mistakes? Is it a pretty open, encouraging team, or is it rife with politics? Do you feel like you can be yourself there?

This is what psychological safety is all about: having a culture where you and your team can bring your whole selves to work, speak your mind with respect for each other, trust each other, be curious, be assured that it’s okay to try new things, and not be penalised speaking out, or for taking small risks. Psychological safety is essential if an organisation wants to have a culture where inventing and implementing breakthrough ideas can thrive.

Using sketching to promote and embed psychological safety

That sounds like a pretty good culture to work in, doesn’t it? So how can you promote and embed that sort of culture? By using more sketching and visualising in your team, of course! Here are 3 ideas to get you going.

1. Draw project ‘horror movie’ posters

I’m a big fan of awesome movie posters, as well as pre-mortem activities, where a team can discuss what they think could go wrong in a project at the beginning of the project, and then discuss what they can do to avoid those things. This is a great way for everyone to be more real with each other, air those anxieties, and be more connected by realising that everyone probably feels the same anxieties.

At the beginning of a project as part of a kick-off meeting, ask everyone to imagine (in silence) the project as a horror movie or disaster movie, where everything they think could go wrong HAS gone wrong. Then, give everyone a sheet of paper and a pencil or marker, and ask them to each draw a promo poster for that movie, showing what has gone wrong.

The drawing doesn’t have to be good at all; just enough to get their idea across. And like all visualisations, just getting those vague thoughts out of people’s heads and out in the open can be really clarifying. You can put everyone at ease by showing them a rough drawing you’ve done yourself, earlier.

Once everyone has finished (after 5 or so minutes), get everyone to stick them up on the wall, and let everyone tell each other about what they’ve drawn. Then, discuss as a team how to avoid those things going wrong. It’s fun, it’s really revealing, and it bonds the team a bit closer together.

2. Do a ‘Circle of expectations’ sketch

Another good activity to do during a project kick-off, or whenever someone new starts on the team, is to do a ‘Circle of expectations’ sketch. Draw a big circle on a whiteboard, and write ‘IN’ in it. Outside the circle on one side, write ‘OUT’.

Set the scene by saying that everyone has a part to play in the culture of the team, and this is the opportunity to state what behaviour expectations we all have. It’s a good idea to demonstrate what you’d like everyone else to do, so go ahead and write something like ‘WE DO THE TASKS WE SAY WE’LL DO’ inside the circle.

Ask everyone to grab a whiteboard marker and write what behaviour they think everyone should have in the team inside the circle. And then ask everyone to write what they don’t want outside the circle.

Discuss as a group how to make sure that everyone does what is inside the circle, and avoid what’s outside the circle. This is a great way to foster honesty, and having each others’ backs.

3. Draw a superhero drawing of yourself

This is a fun and very insightful 15-minute ice-breaker activity to do with your team. Ask everyone to draw a simple outline of a superhero on a sheet of paper (you can use something like the image below as a template if you want).

  • Ask everyone to imagine themselves as a superhero, and then write or draw their own SUPER POWERS around the outline. It’s totally fine to be a bit silly with this; it gives people a chance to get past any awkwardness about drawing and sharing this sort of stuff.
  • Then, ask people to write or draw what they really value inside the outline; this is the POWER SOURCE of you as a superhero. You might want to drop hints by including things like authenticity, honesty… things that reveal what really motivates you.
  • Thirdly, ask everyone to write or draw their KRYPTONITE, the things that make you anxious, annoyed…the things that sap your mojo.

As with all of these activities, get everyone to talk through what they’ve drawn, and discuss as a group how you can support each other to stay connected to your power sources, use your super powers to help each other, and avoid the kryptonites.

Your turn

The only way these activities will bring better psychological safety to your team is for you to actually do them. Maybe try them alone first to get the hang of them, and then do them with your team. I’ve used these over and over again, I’ve seen them bring great benefit to teams, and I guarantee you that they will improve your team’s psychological safety too.

So if you do try any of these activities with your team, let me know, send me a photo… it’d be great to hear how they’ve worked for you!