In visual facilitation, simplicity and speed are key. Way more important than realism or aesthetics. “Learning to draw” means something different when your goal is to communicate concepts than when your goal is to express the glory of a landscape (or whatever).
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Here is a flip chart filled with dogs, as I practice communicating “dog” visually as quickly as possible! 🖍
These dogs aren’t going to win any awards for artistic achievement, but that’s not what visual thinking is about. It’s about communication of ideas. So if my “star dogs” or “stick figure dogs” communicate the idea of “dog” or “dog-ness” to a viewer, they are a 💯% success! 😊 After being mired in the perfectionist paralysis swamp of the art world for so long, there’s something really liberating about that. .
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#visualfacilitation #graphicfacilitation #visualnotes #graphicrecording #sketchnotes #sketchnote #sketchnoting #sketchnotearmy #graphicrecorder #visualshownotes #visualthinking #neulandmarkers

Practicing drawing 3D boxes at my flip chart. As you can see, they get better with practice! 😊
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#practice #visualfacilitation #graphicfacilitation #visualnotes #graphicrecording #sketchnotes #sketchnote #sketchnoting #sketchnotearmy #graphicrecorder #visualshownotes #visualthinking #neulandmarkers

Silly critter knot doodles on a Sunday morning. Hope you’re having a great weekend!
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#doodle #dailydoodle #dailycreative #dailyart #imperfectionism #letitbecrappy #artistsofinstagram #artistsoninstagram #doodlesofinstagram #tinyart #abstractart #doodleart #creativesandboxway #creativeplay #pigmamicron #blackandwhite #knotdoodle #critters #critterdoodles

Today’s graphic facilitation practice: drawing the 8 play personalities from Dr. Stuart Brown’s seminal book, Play. This was a fun project! 🖍
My previous post showed sketches in my journal, as I worked out how to draw some of the icons on a smaller scale. Then I did a few rough passes at a layout—also in my journal—and then I did some practice passes at the wall, on flip chart paper, with my Neuland markers.
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This image is a snapshot of the final result! 😊
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Since I’ll be using this drawing as part of a series of posts over on LinkedIn, and a wider, longer shape works better there, I decided to futz with it a bit in Photoshop, to end up with a 1200×628 pixel dimension graphic.
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If you’re on LinkedIn, watch for my posts on the 8 play personalities over the coming days! 😊
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#play #playpersonalities #calligraphy #visualfacilitation #graphicfacilitation #visualnotes #graphicrecording #sketchnotes #sketchnote #sketchnoting #sketchnotearmy #graphicrecorder #visualthinking #neulandmarkers #brushlettering #icons #bikablo

How do you learn to draw? The same way you learn to do anything else: practice! Applied effort over time. Here’s a peek at my journal, where today I was working out how to draw a director’s chair, with help from The Noun Project (if you don’t know of this fantastic resource yet, check it out at http://bit.ly/2Vj5o2z).
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My first attempts were a bit sad—more like lawn chairs than director’s chairs! 😅 But I assessed what I needed to change, and tried again. When you approach your practice sessions this way, you improve—imagine that! You may not master the thing overnight (let’s face it—you probably won’t), but mastery takes time. We’re aiming for improvement here, not perfection! Bit by bit, you’ll get better, and that’s pretty darn cool. 😊
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#visualfacilitation #graphicfacilitation #visualnotes #graphicrecording #sketchnotes #sketchnote #sketchnoting #sketchnotearmy #graphicrecorder #visualthinking #pigmamicron #moleskine #doodle #practice #directorschair #icons #vizthink