Time for the rubber to meet the road. Let’s say you have identified what you want to study; you have paper and pen ready. What’s next?
A Simple Recipe for Starting to Sketchnote
- Start with how you normally might take notes, and build out from there.
- As you take notes, ask yourself: what can help me visually represent or bookmark what I am learning?
- If something comes to mind, sketch it. If not, press on.
- Repeat.
It’s important to avoid the temptation to overthink what you might draw. Sketchnoting is a growing practice among notetakers. Those who have been doing it the longest, will tell you that sketchnotes are not about art or drawing ability. The use of the term “sketch” is very deliberate. So if you feel like you have zero confidence in your ability to draw, don’t worry: Think Pictionary, not Picasso.
This might sound weird at first, but speed is more important than detail. For example, if I take too long doodling a thought tied to the opening story of a sermon or address, I might miss the moral of the story. Or, while reading the Bible or Book of Mormon, if I try too hard to find the perfect way to illustrate a point or theme, I might spend my whole time drawing and not really learning anything. Phrased another way, your sketchnotes are a means to an end: don’t let it hijack your purpose for taking notes in the first place.
One of the best ways to keep your doodles grounded in what’s practical is to deliberately use basic shapes and figures. Nearly anything you want to sketch can be accomplished using one or any combination of circles, rectangles, triangles and lines. For example, take a look at these shapes:
Now look for those basic shapes in the following doodles:
Let’s Practice: Quick Draw
Sketchnoting gets easier with experience and repetition. Below is a list of simple gospel related words and phrases. Take 10-15 seconds per topic to sketchnote using basic shapes and figures. The whole set shouldn’t take you more than two minutes, fifteen seconds to complete.
- Love
- Faith
- Hope
- Prayer
- Scripture Study
- Baptism
- Holy Ghost
- Resurrection
- Ten Commandments
Don’t look now, but you just sketchnoted! How did it go? Some were probably easier than others. If you were to do this activity side by side with someone else, they would probably use different symbols or ideas to represent each topic and there in lies the beauty of sketchnotes.
Take a picture of your sketchnote and submit it to the blog. Tag it “Chapter2” and we’ll feature it right here:
Your Sketchnotes: Basic Shapes
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In the next section we’ll talk about how you can start to embellish the text of your notes. There’s a lot of things you can do to vary the way you write to add to your sketchnotes.
Next Chapter: Text Styles