creativity

Draw more creatively with FLARE

25/07/2025 by Ben Crothers

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 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.

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.

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.

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. 🙂

Better visual brainstorming with the Concept Canvas

27/01/2019 by Ben Crothers

Making big decisions about which idea or option to invest in amongst a group is really hard. Using the Concept Canvas to visually compare apples to apples makes it a bit easier (includes free PDF).

I was in a brainstorming session from hell once. I was part of a team to help a telecommunications company redesign several of its systems into a seamless customer experience. The stakes were high, and the salaries in the room were pretty high too. The facilitator (a project manager from another agency) started us off by describing the state of the existing systems. Then with whiteboard marker in hand, asked us for ideas.

My heart sank.

I love brainstorming, I really do. I know some people will gnash their teeth and tell you that brainstorming never works, but it can and does work really well, if you ask the right questions, and have just a bit of structure. But alas, we didn’t have the right questions or structure in that session. And the only thing I remember that vaguely sounded like an idea that was written on the whiteboard was QR codes.

That was it, really. QR codes.

The problem with picking out one idea from many… will everyone else understand what it is and why?

I’m sure it made perfect sense to the regional manager that kept clanking on about it, but that’s all we had by the end of the session. I remember thinking that QR codes weren’t connected to the problem we were there to solve (nor to the customers and their situations) at all.

The problem with ideas

Ideas are awesome. An idea can be as vague and unrelated to anything as — yes — QR codes, or as grand and bold as democracy itself. A great idea can come from anywhere as they say, and the more ideas we have, the more chance we have of striking the right idea that will become the right solution.

But as great as ideas are, they can wither and die a premature death if others can’t ‘get it’ the way you do. An idea might seem clear and actionable to you, but it’s usually very tricky for everyone else to ‘see’ what you ‘see’ in your head. How is it connected to the original challenge? How does it work? What’s the risk? What’s in it for me?

Stakeholders may not understand your idea (let alone get onboard), but framing it as a concept helps!

Ideas usually need to be combined and refined into concepts. A concepts is what links one or more ideas into a structured actionable solution. It contains a lot more information that fleshes things out in such a way that you and a team could then execute on it. If you only ever go as far as generating ideas, it can be hard trying to refine and combine them, and it gets really hard to then make any decisions based on them, such as comparing one over another, or estimating how long it might take to make, or which market to take that idea into.

Refine and combine your ideas into concepts

The Concept Canvas

That’s where the Concept Canvas comes in. The Concept Canvas gives you and your team a way to add enough structure to your ideas, so that you can evaluate them more confidently. Like all canvases used in design and business strategy, you can draw it up on a whiteboard for a group to use, or draw it on single sheets of paper for individuals to use. And it looks like this:

The Presto Sketching Concept Canvas: This is an easy template to use to turn several vague ideas into a consistently structured set that you can then compare for value, risk, or any other factor you need

(By the way, you can also read about this canvas in Presto Sketching, the book).

Here’s a free PDF of the Concept Canvas for you to download and use yourself. 🙂

The Concept Canvas helps you to keep a ‘line of sight’ from the original problem you’re trying to solve and/or value proposition, to the solution you set up, through to the shipped product, service or process.

How to use the Concept Canvas

For the purposes of explanation, let’s assume you’re doing some sort of brainstorming session with a group to generate ideas on how to solve a particular problem, or meet a certain customer need.

Start your session with a clear problem statement or design challenge that the group must tackle.

Example: “We believe that people under 25 want to invest in property, but id it too expensive to even begin. We can help them by selling them small pieces of existing properties and then giving them the proportional share of any net rental income. We’ll know we’re right when first-time buyers of one piece return to buy more pieces.”

Ask everyone to individually come up with as many ideas as possible, on any particular aspect of this challenge. Wild and random; boring and expected; big, little… it doesn’t matter. Help get them started with more focused creative “How…?” questions, like these:

How can we attract prospective customers who have never considered this as a service?
How can we encourage existing customers to buy more pieces?
How do existing customers sell their pieces?

Now, of course people will (hopefully) come up with all sorts of ideas early on, and it’s great to capture those as phrases on sticky notes, whiteboard scrawls and sketches on paper. But watch out for ideas that are just one word. For example, I can just imagine my QR Code Guy blurting out “Referrals!” If this does happen, ask the person to add a bit more detail according to the “How…?” question, the audience and its goal.

Ask everyone to refine and combine all those ‘small’ ideas into their strongest three ideas, and fill in a Concept Canvas (above) to flesh out each of those ideas into a more realised concept.

Begin by copying the hypothesis into the Hypothesis section of the canvas.
Write in which particular audience type each idea is suited to in the Audience section (e.g. “Cynical evaluator, Brand new customer, Champion regular customer).
In the Goal section, write what that audience type’s goal is. It should be specific to the audience, and not a business or product goal. This helps everyone to really think hard about connecting their idea properly to the initial challenge.
In the Channels section, write in what channels are involved in the concept. How does the customer actually experience/use this concept? Is it through the existing company website? A new app on her mobile phone? On her laptop at work?
Now, use the main area of the canvas (Experience section) to describe and illustrate what the actual experience is. This could be a bulleted list, a flowchart, a storyboard, a set of wireframes… whatever helps to really bring this concept to life, and add rigour to your group’s thinking.
Finally, put a mark on each of the sliding scales in the Scope Sliders section for how ‘big’ the concept is. Just rough guesses is fine at this stage. You can use the existing sliders (risk, effort, value, resourcing, timing), or replace them with your own factors that would be important to you and your project.

Because everyone is using a common structure, the Concept Canvas now makes it easier for everyone to read and understand everyone else’s concepts. As a way of refining the output of the group, you can get each person to briefly pitch their concepts to everyone, and then them give them all three sticky dots to ‘vote’ on the concepts that they think are the strongest.

What you should now have is a refined ‘gallery’ of Concept Canvases. Even though the contents of each main Experience section might visually vary, you’ve given everyone just enough structure to help you sort through them and start sizing them for risk, effort, value, resourcing, and timing (or any other factors that you might have used).

Give it a try

As with all the canvases and whiteboard patterns that I share, why not download the free PDF of the Concept Canvas and try it yourself? There’s no harm in trying it out on paper yourself first, and then with your team on the whiteboard; I guarantee that visually structuring your ideas as fleshed out concepts will help everyone ‘get’ your ideas a whole lot more.

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How to draw mandalas

28/09/2018 by Ben Crothers

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

17/08/2018 by Ben Crothers

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

17/08/2018 by Ben Crothers

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.

10 ideas to get you inspired to sketch

28/08/2017 by Ben Crothers

You want to sketch more…or just start sketching… but it’s hard to know where to start. I hear you. Here’s 10 things to draw, when you don’t know what to draw.

I know what it’s like. You want to sketch (or you want to sketch more often), but you can’t really think of what to sketch, so it’s just really hard to get started. Or you’re looking at other sketches you see, and you can’t help thinking that you have to sketch like that first time, which holds you back as well.

A big part of just getting going is saying to yourself that whatever you sketch is not going to be perfect. It’s just not. But it can be not perfect and still be satisfying! That awesome sketch by someone else you saw on that Instagram post? That’s sketch No. 10 or 11. You’re never going see sketches No. 1 to No. 9, because they were too crappy to show to the world. But sketches No. 1 to No. 9 had to happen first, to get to that awesome sketch No. 10.

So with that in mind, here we go: 10 ideas for what to draw when you don’t know what to draw.

1. Get your Kandinsky on

Start with a fresh sheet of paper, or a fresh page in your sketchbook. Take your marker or pencil of choice, and let your hand draw some flowy curly lines around the page. Draw some straight lines, too. Then, colour in (or make some parallel line marks) in all the little spaces enclosed by the lines. And behold! You’re an Abstract Expressionist!

You too can be an Abstract Expressionist, like Vasily Kandinsky (painting shown: Composition 8, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris)

If someone gives you funny looks while you do this on the train, just tell them you’re studying the renowned Russian Abstract Expressionist Vasily Kandinsky, who did this sort of thing all the time (that’s his Composition 8 in the image above, painted in 1923).

2. Find meaning in the scribbles

This is another idea to help you park your own self-judgement, and to just get going drawing something. Start with your marker in the middle of a fresh blank page, and just do loose scribbles for a minute or two, without taking your marker off the page. It’s better if you don’t even look at what you’re drawing. Make sure you fill the page. Then, look at what you’ve drawn, and see if you can find some meaningful shapes among the scribbles. Is that a face there? Or a rabbit? Whatever you find, make them stand out more by outlining them with your marker. Fun, hey?

Here’s my example. What can you see in the scribbles? I saw a weird horse-like thing, a dude with angel wings, and a ribbon of some sort.

3. Sketch 3D crystal patterns

This is another idea to help you replace self-judgement with a sense of creativity and discovery. Fill the middle of the paper with some randomly-placed dots. Connect the dots in a way that makes lots of triangles and other random 4- or 5-sided shapes. Then, shade some of the shapes in a mid tone, and some other shapes in a darker tone. Before long, you might see a weird crystalline shape emerge, like these 3D crystal phone covers.

4. Sketch a wine bottle 5 times

Alright, let’s move on into sketching actual things. This one’s about giving your hand a chance to practice rendering what you ‘see’ in your head. Draw a wine bottle. It can be as sloppy as you want. Then draw another, and another, and so on. Each time, pay more attention to the quality of the line. Your wine bottle number 5 is better than number 1, isn’t it?

5. Sketch different sorts of pot plants

This is a simple and fun one. Sketch different sorts of plants in pots. They can be simple or complex, beautiful or ugly, regular or hipster… it’s just a chance for you to draw a similar thing over and over, and inject a little bit of creativity or a lot!

6. Look at all the trophies you won!

Time for a motivational one. What’s something you want to be famous for? Sketch a trophy for that thing, with your name on it. What’s something you want to achieve at work? Write that down, add your name, and sketch a trophy around it. Don’t worry, no-one else is going to see these trophies; it’s just a really good idea to visualise your goals to help you make them happen.

7. Try a bit of Zentangling

Zentangles are abstract creative drawings that are made by sketching random creative patterns. They can start with a real-life object, or they can be completely abstract… it’s up to you. Draw a simple object (fairly large on the paper), like a fish, a tree, a figure, headphones…it could be something that’s sitting right next to you, or something you’re thinking about. Then, sketch in a few structural lines inside any of the larger shapes of your drawing, as if it’s made out of a wooden frame. Then, fill each shape with random lines, loops, circles… wherever your hand takes you! Loads of fun.

This page on WikiHow is a nice place to help you learn more about this absorbing way of sketching.

8. Visualise your day as a flow sketch

Take a look at your calendar for today. What sort of day are you going to have? Or what sort of day did you have? Using a fresh page, draw each event as a small picture of some sort, moving from one side of the page to another. You could just sketch symbols (like stars and boxes), or you could sketch simple icon-like pictures (like people in a meeting, or a document, and so on), it’s up to you. Then, connect the pictures together in a way that shows the flow of your day.

9. Sketch skylines

Sketches of skylines are really fun. They can be fairly complex and detailed, but even just light simple silhouettes just look crazy cool. Wherever you’re at — on the bus, at home, at work — look outside at the skyline, and draw it. If you want to enhance it a bit with extra buildings (or UFOs and Godzillas), that’s cool too.

10. Sketch something from your social media stream

Do you spend time thumbing through social media streams of images and updates, like on Instagram, Facebook, and so on? Stop at a particular image you like, and sketch it. Remember, your sketch doesn’t have to be good, just sketch it anyway. Do this a few times, and try not to keep thumbing through looking for an ‘easy’ one, or a ‘cool’ one. Just sketch a few.

This is sketch of a photo of my mate Josh Stinton and his buddies, who have just completed a 190k mountain bike race in the Arctic, to raise money for charity. Amazing!

And there you have it! 10 ideas to get you sketching, and sketching more often. As always, drop me a line if this has been useful for you. I’ve got bags and bags of ideas like this, so if you want 10 more ideas, let me know, too.