The value of a pencil drawing is real. With pencil and paper, we are touching our thoughts and ideas. We can erase and revisit. By putting our thoughts directly on paper, with no computer or screens, we avoid the middleman: no login & password needed. The return of a pencil and paper can be freeing and exhilarating. Who feels it, knows it.
Tactile
In an age of reaching for technology as a solution, screens, apps and programs can help us “render” an idea, but there is greater power and identity with sitting by the fire or at the kitchen table and bringing an idea from our head to paper by drawing it out. A tactile approach. touch from pencil to piece of wood is that much closer. Who feels it knows it.
Erase
How great to pencil a line, representing, say a hot room door, and with a quick rub of an eraser, change its location along the common wall? Wouldn’t life be great if life had an eraser? But it doesn’t. We live with our actions. Yet, a pencil is being able to think before we act. How liberating to be able to draw a window, and right after that moment, be able to come back and change its size? Who feels it knows it.
Ownership
When we pencil draw the beginnings of our sauna plan, we take immediate ownership. Drawing out benches and stove location, it’s much more real than if we were laying things out on a computer screen. Pencil drawings stay with us. They may be a gentle reminder of younger time’s past, drawing with chalk on the sidewalk connected us to it. We own our pencil drawings.
When I first communicate with consultant clients, I ask them to come back to me with a list of topics/questions AND to send me a pencil drawing. I love it. And they love it. I love consulting with folks interested in making their own kick ass sauna happen. Whether they will be the ones to pound the nails or not, they all recognize the value of a pencil drawing.
All you need:
- a pencil
- some graph paper
- a ruler
- a little mostly legal libation
Try it.
6 thoughts on “The value of a pencil drawing”
That’s what I did for my current sauna build. I have reams of preliminary drawings, and different layout before I made my final decision.
Have you always been gifted with remarkable “outside-the-box” insights Glenn, and/or do you believe your sauna practise contributed in some way to the growth of that cognitive/personality trait development?
Christopher, are you in mental health as your day job? And if yes, let’s consider a guest post from you. Working title: “Is it better to live inside the box, outside the box, or along the edge of the box.”
Glenn, would you consider a post or comment focused on cold room floor finish? Drain? Same cement board/vinyl patch finish? Thanks!
Hi David.
Yes! This can be drilled down deeper. In the latest version of my book, I am pretty detailed about the tried and true system of pitching cement board to a drain and then skim coating atop. There are other ways, as you mention. Tile. Etc.
I have the book Glenn and have read it twice but see nothing about cold room floors. Just the hot room. Am I doing the same thing in both? Sloped floor and drain for the cold room just like the hot room?