Imperfect Lines, Honest Presence
This sketch is not perfect—and that’s exactly why it’s alive. The bold figure, the dissolving hat, the tilted chair: all of it feels unfinished, fleeting, caught in motion. It’s what the Japanese call wabi-sabi—finding beauty in the imperfect, the impermanent, the incomplete.
But there’s something deeper here too. A quick sketch is not just what the eye records. It’s what the soul permits. To draw without fixing, without polishing, is to admit the world will not hold still for us. Life slips past. The lines break off. And yet, somehow, the essence remains.
When you sketch this way, you are not the master of the moment—you are its guest. The pencil does not carve permanence; it pays attention. The act of drawing becomes an act of being present, of honoring what is already vanishing.
So here’s a challenge: grab a pencil and sketch someone near you in sixty seconds. Do not erase. Do not perfect. Let the lines falter. When you finish, ask yourself: What truth did the imperfection reveal?
Perhaps presence itself is the real art.
Narwhal flavours, washi tape as always and a cheeky Cymera sticker to start my current sketchbook… this one entitled “All Fishes Are Weird”.
One way to kill time during delays getting back home on the train back from London yesterday!
Overheard the title on the radio this weekend describing Radiohead songs of the In Rainbows era (you probably know the one)… And that ends my current sketchbook!
A line taken from the current book I’m digesting…
Finally reading the My Neighbor Totoro book my girlfriend got me for my birthday. Slowly getting through but enjoying it immensely!
