Stopping before it's finished

Most of the drawings I have ruined, I ruined in the last five minutes.

There comes a moment when a sketch holds. The proportions are roughly right, the line is alive, enough has been said. And exactly then I think: just the details now. Just deepen that shadow. Just finish that window. And then it's gone — not wrong, but dead.

A drawing is nearly always finished before you finish it. What you leave out, the viewer fills in, and their version is livelier than anything you could have added. A line that stops halfway suggests more than a line that tells you everything.

Try it. Put your pen down today at the moment you think: now the details. At that exact moment, not five minutes later. Look at it again tomorrow and ask yourself whether you really short-changed it.

It takes practice, because it feels like giving up. It isn't. It is knowing when you have looked enough.