Supercharging our words with drawing (and a drink)
By Matthew Magain, Chief Doodler, Sketch Group
Last month’s online Sip and Sketch session was a fun (and challenging) introduction on how to apply sketching in a communications role.
The Sip and Sketch format is an informal format, whereby:
One person describes their drink, and tells us a story about it (or makes one up);
They then share a word that they wish they could draw better;
As a group, we all tackle the drawing challenge together.
To set at ease those participants who found the idea of showing their drawings to the group positively mortifying (there are always a few!) we covered a few basics, including:
The Visual Alphabet
Drawing box figures instead of stick figures
Facial expression matrix
Between all of the sipping and the sketching, we heard some heart-warming stories; and as the session flowed, our drawings became more confident and the requests became more ambitious!
In the second half of the session, animals were a recurring theme, and we were really challenged by requests on how to draw some very specific concepts, such as:
a bicycle
communication vs engagement
the cycle of homelessness
I hope that by the end of the session the participants began to feel more confident in their ability to draw, and could see a number of ways to develop their innate sketching superpowers in the office. I certainly enjoyed it!
A huge thank-you to everyone who attended. I hope to see some of you in person at the upcoming Visual Thinking for Communicators training workshop in Melbourne on Friday, October 28.
