I love this and I want to do it so bad so instead of starting with simple pencil and paper of course I bought a new iPad Mini 7 and Apple Pencil Pro because of course only THEN will I be able to sketch. Sigh.
Books
- Back of the Napkin, Dan Roam—he has several newer books also
- Rapid Viz, Kurt Hanks and Larry Belliston
- Experiences in Visual Thinking, Robert McKim
- Do the Sketch a Day for a year yourself
- Envisaging Information, Edward Tufte—full of beautiful examples, critiques and principle to help you present information clearly
Sketchnoting—taking visual notes of talks, for example—is also popular and a great way to practise:
- The Sketchnote handbook, Mike Rohde—and video course, and Sketchnote Army podcast
- Eva-Lotta Lamm—lots of sketchnoting resources and great examples, also a course
- Teresa Watts
Some Principles
Copy, copy, copy
Before writing your own music it’s typical to learn to play other music. The same is true of drawing. Whenever you see a drawing you like try and copy it. Look closely to see how they did it. See if you can do it just as well.
Practice
- Get a postcard sketchbook and send old-fashioned postcards. Bonus: you’ll appreciate your surroundings a lot more on holiday if you take the time to sit, observe and draw
- Try practising with some of the drawing sketchplanations
- Do the Sketch a Day for a year yourself
Draw to think
Be the first on the whiteboard—physical or virtual. Need to figure something out? Start by putting some lines on paper. There’s nothing wrong with boxes and arrows to start.
Persevere in the middle
Sketches often look bad in the middle (see the learning pit). It’s a process. Don’t give up because something looks rubbish. Keep working on it. See how you can correct it. You may learn more from figuring out why a sketch looks wrong than if you happen to get it right.