📝 Building a Sketching Habit

Good is good enough

In this post, I revisit some of the ideas I wrote about in a previous piece. Read that one first if you’d like a wider view on the topic:

✏️ Skill and Craft

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‘Material for our work surrounds us at every turn. It’s woven into conversation, nature, chance encounters, and existing works of art.’ — Rick Rubin

Some drawings of the lounge in my ‘Yellow Brick Home’ in London, 2022

Inspiration can be found in the most ordinary places — especially in the places we inhabit. Where do we start? We start by looking, by being observant and receptive to the world, to our environment. It takes practice.

Try drawing the same space for a few days, a week, or a whole month. It’s a good sketching habit to pick up. You’ll see how you’ll start noticing more things as you go back to the blank page every day. Sometimes is better to do this exercise instead of changing subjects too often. It’s a fantastic way to help us see beyond the obvious.

Drawings don’t lie, they reveal what we pay attention to. One can guess what I loved the most about my place back in London on the drawings above: those three tall windows to the street with a row of brick terrace houses. And my plants. It doesn’t matter if they are not perfect (the drawings) - in fact, it doesn’t matter if they are good or bad at all. What matters is that we show up consistently to look and draw. To practice our skills and craft.

Very good work, however, can be consistently achieved through skill and craft - even in the absence of talent and inspiration. Christoph Niemann (in my opinion, one of the best visual artists out there) puts it in the right words: great work cannot be planned - it depends on luck.

This is one of the big lessons I learned in my professional experience as a designer (and aspiring artist): good (work) is good enough. And good work can be better achieved through iteration and practice of ideas, more than relying on talent and inspiration. It is better to finish something and then move on. Because what makes our work better over time (and what increases the luck of great work) is the commitment to practice our craft, engage in a sketching habit, and iterate ideas.

That’s really the joy of doing anything creative.

Happy sketching! 💫✏️

Ana

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All images and text © Ana Vila