Back To The Drawing Board

Back to the drawing board is a phrase that many people have said quite often even if they don't literally have a drawing board, they say it for the fun of it or it's just a favorite saying that gets misused and abused. For me though I actually do mean back to the drawing board because I use one a lot for random ideas and quick sketching.

Drawing boards are best when you can sit them on a flat table and angle the board so that you are not arching your back over your drawings too much and fit correctly at the edge of a table is best, so you're not leaning too much forward to actually do any drawing without causing yourself a nasty back injury with straining too much (Hell, it sounds like I mean you're on the toilet!)

Back to the drawing board refers to what needs to be redone, because you may have found that you've been working on something that hasn't entirely worked out and you need to reassess what could be used to improve upon the original design or drawing usually. Even if you don't do any drawing or art, back to the drawing board can often still refer to your current way of working and you can apply a certain way of thinking to always make sure you never need to go back to the drawing board to redo something.

In the case of drawing or anything really, you should....

• Plan your drawing or activity so that you can look ahead for any potential obstacles and pitfalls.
• Organize your work space so that everything is where it should be, easy to locate and stress and clutter free.
• Be inspired by reference material often and always have an end goal in mind for your project.
• List the benefits of your latest work of art or at the very least write a small promotional piece about it, for later reference, you could perhaps find it useful when selling your creative works.
• Quality first, quantity last, once you have a protype of something, make sure everything about it is quality and then decide on how you can slim line your production line, by either cutting cost or time but never cut corners that will compromise the quality.

Whenever you go back to the drawing board you are stepping back in a moment in time, but never look at this as a negative, some of the worlds greatest story writers go through 4 or more drafts before the actual editing stage of their book and this could be percieved as perfectionism, but no, it's just being thorough in their approach and because editing and writing drafts makes you a better writer and helps you self edit as well as re-write better stories and character dialogue too your end result will be far superior.

I always go back the drawing board with certain drawings because I know I can do better and in some cases I do better and exceed my own expectations. Rarely do I fail on ketching something, if I've got the determination to create, then nothing will stop me.

So when you go back to the drawing board, go back with open eyes and an open mind, because the second or third time around will produce some surprising results that you can use to your best advantage.