Use the zoom the room technique to discover and draw three different stories from the same scene. Take thirty minutes to do this exercise. Use the time limit to prevent overthinking and spark creativity.

1. Zoom all the way out to tell the story of the entire scene you’re looking at. In a park, draw the whole playground including the children, parents, trees, and paths. At the airport, draw the travelers, gate agent, signs, and luggage filling the aisles, even the planes waiting outside. In a restaurant, draw the decor, plates of food, the diners, and waiters. If you’re struggling with rendering perspective, see here.

2. Zoom in a bit more. Tell the story of the two little girls playing tag, or the weary traveler asleep on their luggage, or the waiter pouring wine.

3. Zoom in even more. At the park, tell the story of a pair of shoes and socks left behind by their owner running barefoot through the grass. At the airport, draw the ticket anxiously clutched in a fearful flyer’s hand. In a restaurant, draw a drink garnish.

After you’ve tried this exercise, notice how you see the world differently even when you aren’t holding your sketchbook.

The process of creating an in-the-moment illustration is a mixture of planning and improvisation. Using compositional concepts organizes your approach as you work. Here’s how they helped me draw this farmer’s market vendor and her cheerful flower stall.

1. Choose a scene (don’t second-guess what inspires you) and begin your drawing with your hook. Mine was the daisy-like yellow flowers that caught my attention as I walked past the market stall.

2. Add more details to your story, considering how each element might engage your viewer.

I drew the rest of the flowers, the buckets, and the table using compositional techniques to pull the viewer into the scene. The tangle of flowers and stems and pops of color create a heavier spot on the page (balance), and the red and yellow move the eye across the flowers (movement). I organized the chaos of the stems into a series of vertical lines (rhythm). (To see more on adding color, see here.)

3. Have you told the story you wanted? I considered making this a short story about lovely market flowers, but decided I wanted to add the vendor. As you add more elements, consider how composition can underscore the story.

The flowers are the star of my story and the vendor is the secondary plot line. Compositional elements (weight, movement, and rhythm) lead the viewer to her after they pay attention to the flowers.

4. To keep the eye moving beyond the flowers to the vendor, I drew the crate behind the flowers. The repeating lines of the slats echo the leading line of the table (rhythm) and encourage the eye to move farther back into the piece (movement).

5. I drew the vendor from the top down. (See more on drawing figures). No advance planning was required to leave space for her. My viewpoint made that compositional choice for me, and she naturally fit into my drawing. You’re close to completing your drawing, so make sure you haven’t omitted any critical story elements. Are the who, what, why, (when, if it’s important) and where clear?

6. Provide more context of the setting. I drew the crates and baskets behind the vendor, adding more detail to the baskets (balance) to encourage the viewer to spend more time in the background with the vendor (movement).

Assess the final composition by seeing if your eye travels the same path on the page as it does looking at the scene. If so, you’ve got a great composition, and your viewer will read your image in a similar way. (For more on drawing perspective, see here.)

Zoom the room and find your story. Tell that same story three different ways, focusing on balance, then rhythm, and then movement. You’ll have three different drawings. Take no more than thirty minutes for this exercise.

For this exercise, you’ll take what you’ve learned about scale and proportion and apply that to drawing a scene that catches your eye, with an emphasis on how the elements relate to each other.

1. Draw your hook (for more information on drawing the hook, see here). This first element is your measuring stick. I was at a wedding, and I drew the bar where people were standing.

2. Draw the second element and use an impromptu unit of measurement or points of alignment to calculate the relationship to your measuring stick.

My second element was an elegant woman waiting for her drink. I used points of alignment, noting that her waist aligned with the bar, her shoulders aligned with the first row of glasses, and the top of her head aligned with the bottlenecks.

3. Once you’ve drawn two elements in relation to each other, you’ve established a scale. Any new elements must be measured against any existing element, using either impromptu units of measurement or points of alignment.

4. I drew the bartender using his head as an impromptu unit of measurement. He was about two heads higher than the top of the glasses and about one head taller than the woman.

5. I included a painting of a sailor above the bar because it communicated the unique venue of this wedding: an art museum. The sailor was about as tall as the woman below, so she became my impromptu unit of measurement.

6. I estimated that the width of the frame was about the same height as the sailor’s face, so that became my impromptu unit of measurement. I added a few more details and some watercolor to complete my scene.

Point Proven: Now that we’re at the end of the chapter, look at the drawing you did at the beginning. I told you so!