Drawing takes practice. Great drawers draw things like the Mona Lisa and God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Art Directors, on the other hand, draw people like this:

And that’s okay.

Most Art Directors, myself included, used to know how to draw. Really — we knew how to draw people and animals and vases and fields of corn. Then we started directing art and such. That meant “drawing” headlines instead of heads, and layouts instead of landscapes. And that’s okay, too. Because these were just ideas, and clients knew their finished product would look nothing like my crazy sketches they waited three days to see. They knew it was only a concept and actually used their imaginations to fill in the details, knowing the finished piece would be much better. The idea was king, and the execution of it an exciting collaboration of creative and client vision.