Visualisation & Book Publishing.
Learning to see rather than to look.
Original sketches by Charles Leon
Click on image to order your copy of the book
There is no doubt that COVID has affected almost every person on the planet in one way or another. The lockdowns meant that we had to avoid the one thing we cherish most; human contact. As a result, we became isolated, insular and often self-reflective. We’ve had to keep our distance and wear masks. We worked from home and learned to communicate via Zoom calls.
Relationships were put under a microscope. Some of you became home-schoolers and realised that things had changed in maths and biology since you were at school. We took online courses; some drank too much, some took up a daily walking routine. For many people, it was a time of financial and emotional turmoil. But, on the other hand, some wrote the novel or completed the project they’d been putting off for years. Without any milestones or markers, these past two years seem to have blurred into one very long day. We seem to remember time by exception rather than routine.
Politicians pretended they knew what they were doing or handed responsibility to “the science.” The extraordinary situation exposed the worst and the best of morality, ethics and dedication.
The Pandemic changed the whole world in some way for everyone.
Lockdown was a curse, but for some, it was also a blessing. For me, it changed one significant thing.
I have always carried a sketchbook with me whenever I’ve travelled and have always doodled in meetings. So, when the lockdown was announced, I wanted to use the time productively and do something I enjoyed that I could do alone and outdoors and had some purpose.
I’m an early riser, usually getting up long before most people. Early morning has always been my most productive time. So, I began sketching outdoors early in the mornings, leaving the house by 5:30 and getting back by 8 am. I sketched whatever took my fancy that was within walking distance of home. Home for me is Sheen in West London, close to Barnes and Mortlake.
The Watermans Arms and the Bulls Head.
I decided first to sketch all the churches within a small radius. When that ran out, I started sketching the crematoriums, which became local buildings of interest and morphed into a budding relationship with my local area.
It’s so often the things closest to us that we fail to notice. Familiarity breeds numbness. When we get comfortable with something, we ignore it. It becomes a visual habit and something we don’t need to pay attention to. We don’t have to think about it. We relegate it to the back of our minds, and our brains save precious energy to concentrate on the exceptions, not the rules. We do the same when we drive a car; most functions are automatic, we don’t think about every detail of what we have to do. This frees up mental space for “exceptions”, like the car breaking in front of us or a cyclist swerving. The difficulty is finding the balance between attention and automation.
On the Thames
All my life, I’ve started things with great enthusiasm and then let them ebb away. Like most people, I find it challenging to keep going unless something has become a habit. Habits take time, and if they’re not enjoyable and relatively easy, the motivation to keep going slips away. We need hooks to help us succeed and overcome the effort to continue.
Thus began the thirty-day sketching challenge to myself (which soon became 300 days). If I posted my sketches and told everyone that I would do so for 30 consecutive days, that would help to motivate me not to give up. It helps also that I enjoyed the sketching and began to see some tangible progress. What I hadn’t expected was where this would take me.
I started in March 2021 and, as I write this, I have sketched almost every day since then. So now it’s a habit! If I don’t sketch something every day, something feels wrong and unbalanced, like forgetting to brush your teeth. I love having my trusty fountain pen and a block of paper in front of me.
Sketching has had enormous benefits and has been life-changing for me. It probably kept me sane. I’ve reconnected with my local area, learned to see rather than just look, and have found a deep joy in watching my progress.
Local London - A Sketch Journal - Barnes Mortlake & Sheen (click on image to order your copy)
You can order your copy here!
I had always thought of publishing a book (but never quite got round to it) and had thought it would be a worthy academic tome filled with pithy insights. That’s not what happened! The book was not my idea; it was the idea of my local community.
The book is filled with the simple joy of looking at everyday surroundings. I had forgotten what a pleasure that is. We so often take for granted our surroundings because they are so familiar. We forget to look above the shop windows and admire the architecture. We forget to take pleasure in simple things and the stories around us.
When my children were very much younger, we would sit at the kitchen table with a roll of lining paper and start telling stories. Anyone could scribble or sketch down anything; it was part of a joyous game, a continuous process. Quality and skill were irrelevant; participation and doing were what mattered. A combination of marks on paper, wish fulfilment, words, activity, and above all, story-telling. That sense of fun and joy that sketching can create has always been with me. It just got buried for a while.
The National Gallery & St Martins in the Fields
Stories are told to be shared and to be passed on. The sketches, and later the book, was something I wanted to share.
My sketching started as an isolated activity, but others, the local community, soon became involved in sharing their stories, loves and losses, shared histories, and their connections to the local area. It became a communal activity. And so, the idea for a book was born.
However, ideas remain ideas unless we do something to make them happen.
There is a difference between wishing for something to happen and visualising (manifesting for my US cousins) something happening. Like hoping and dreaming, wishing focuses your attention on something outside your control and focuses on what you don’t have. Wishing seems to amplify what you lack. It gives away responsibility to something or someone else. Wishing doesn’t change your actions; visualising does.
Visualising, or manifesting, is a method used extensively by athletes to prepare your mind and body to take action to get where you want to be. Athletes will see, hear, and feel every detail of their race or event in their mind’s first. Thus, they prepare themselves so that they don’t have to think about what they have to do consciously. Our brains light up in the same way when we imagine something as when we actually do something. By practice and consistency, we learn to behave “intuitively”.
The Crossing - Barnes
Designers similarly focus on what will be, what can be brought into being, not what we don’t have. Designers use visualisation as a positive thinking tool to train their minds to look to a different future. We try to see, feel, and experience things in our minds first, which changes how we act and behave. (that, by the way, doesn’t mean that designers are necessarily lovely people as a result).
If you frame things in your mind as negative; I don’t want this or that, then that’s what your mind (and resulting actions) will focus on. That’s probably why so many diets fail. When you focus on what you don’t want to be, that’s what you focus on. I know this may seem very obvious, but it’s surprising how many people view what they want to achieve by stating what they don’t want.
On the other hand, to believe in something as possible, you must frame things positively. Belief takes practice.
Visualisation is a skill like any other; it needs to be practised consistently. Like brushing your teeth or driving a car, it needs to become a behavioural habit, an automatic response.
You have to see, feel and believe yourself doing the things you want, and you must take action.
Richmond Railway Bridge.
Many gurus will tell you to focus on the end goal. But I think that just visualising a goal almost always ends in disappointment. You can’t bridge a gap by simply staring at the end goal. You need the journey, small steps towards your goal. That’s why vision boards (much loved by gurus) do nothing more than make you panic. You can’t leap to the endpoint if you don’t take steps to get there.
It’s wrong to think that you need all the answers when you start or before you start. Perfection kills action, experiment and serendipity. Athletes train and work at their craft (so does anyone who wants to progress towards any goal). Likewise, you don’t have to have all the skills and knowledge when you move forward with a new project. You need to be a student, not a master.
Sketching showed me that progress only happens if you do the work. And it’s the work that gives you purpose. So, on to the next local area!