Relaxed tension. Two parents at a national chess competition. Their kids squared off at the board, and so did they — one leaning back, shoe propped up, trying for calm; the other sitting stiff, watchful. The game played out in more ways than one.
The meal was my attempt to bring a little comfort into the rugged outdoors. The sketch was my reminder—to hold onto the moment, even when mosquitoes, ashes, and deflating air mattresses had other plans.
Jury Duty, June 2013
Fifty of us sat in that room, each one staring at a phone or scribbling in a notebook, killing time. The lawyers asked their questions, picking us off one by one like a slow game of dodgeball. I wasn’t chosen, so I drew instead—earbuds, slouched shoulders, the hum of waiting caught in a few quick lines.
Super Nationals at the Gaylord—two rivers running through the lobby, actual boats gliding under glass ceilings, a nature center tucked between restaurants. Noise everywhere: kids, clocks, pawns and queens. Yet here, in the middle of it, a pause. A man leans back with the weight of waiting. A woman sits, at ease but still seeking. An empty chair remembers everyone who has rested there. In a place built to dazzle, what lingered with me was not the spectacle, but the silence. To draw is to honor the quiet within the clamor.
thinking and seeing for better being — https://forming20.com/
Sometimes the quickest drawings hold the deepest truths. During an after-sermon discussion about understanding the love of God, I found myself listening with one ear and drawing with the other. Frank, seated across the room, made a natural model—relaxed posture, thoughtful presence, and a face full of character.
With a pen in hand, I traced his form in a quick contour line, following the folds of his shirt, the tilt of his jaw, the stillness of his hands resting in his lap. Contour drawing asks us to see more than just the surface—it demands patience and presence, a slowing down until the line itself feels like prayer.
Frank became more than a subject; he was a reminder that the love of God is often revealed in ordinary moments and everyday people.
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!
The moment of death of a Christian as they leave this earthly world and travel to the afterlife. The figure is halfway between the earthly and heavenly realms. The earthly realm I painted in flat paints. The heavenly realm is bright and glorious. God is depicted in trinity, you see Father, Son and Holy Spirit as one.
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!
