For many, sketching is difficult enough. Imagine doing it upside-down—and doing it exceptionally well.

If you're not proficient at reading upside down, you just haven't done enough client presentations yet. You'll get there.

But Paul R. Williams, known as the “Architect to the Stars,” mastered the remarkable skill of sketching upside-down.

Born on this day in 1894, Williams was unique in many ways. Over his career, Williams designed more than 3,000 buildings, including iconic landmarks such as the Beverly Hills Hotel and homes for Hollywood legends Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball.

You may also be familiar with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, to which William provided his services to his friend, Danny Thomas, free of charge.

His talent, resilience, and creativity transformed the field of architecture and left an enduring legacy that continues to inspire today.

For Williams, it wasn’t only the drawing that was reversed—it was perspective itself. I’ll come back to that.

First, let’s dig deeper into upside-down sketching.

If you’re not already hand-sketching, it’s worth remembering that it isn’t just a nostalgic skill—it’s a strategic advantage.

I believe hand sketching is still one of the most powerful superpowers a residential designer can bring to a meeting. It’s fast, flexible, and communicates ideas in a way that CAD and BIM simply can’t match in the moment.

A quick plan vignette, section, or perspective can clarify an idea faster than a five‑minute explanation. Clients “see” alignment, scale, and relationships in real time, right at the table.

Sketching turns the meeting into a collaborative act—erase here, extend there, test an option—so clients feel like co-authors rather than spectators.

It exposes a designer’s thought process. You’re not just recording decisions; you’re discovering them on the page, which often leads to better, more responsive solutions.

I’ve found that the looser the better (if that’s a word). You capture mood, character, and charm in a way that a neatly rendered print sometimes sterilizes. It reassures clients that their home will feel human, not just “compliant.”

Still, I know that not everyone feels comfortable putting pen to paper, especially in front of a client. Maybe it's having trouble drawing a straight line, or you worry the sketch won’t “look good enough.” That hesitancy is real—and completely normal.

The good news is, confidence in sketching isn’t about being born with talent; it’s about training your eye to really see. One simple exercise can help you do just that, and it doesn’t require you to be a “natural” artist at all.

It starts with a small act of rebellion against how we usually look at drawings: you turn the original upside down.

Yes, this trick is very much a real thing, and it’s a classic beginner exercise in drawing instruction.

When you flip the reference upside down, your “verbal” brain stops labeling objects (door, eye, nose, column) and is forced to see only lines, angles, and shapes. That shift helps beginners copy proportions more accurately because they’re observing relationships—length, direction, spacing, and negative space—instead of drawing what they think something looks like.

Pick a photo or sketch, invert it, and then draw it as you see it—upside down—without turning it right‑side up until the end.

If you'd like a quick demonstration, here is one helpful example (Click the image to play a video):

As you practice that exercise, you may notice something subtle happening. You’re not just copying lines; you’re shifting perspective. You’re learning to see familiar things in an unfamiliar way—and to get comfortable being a bit uncomfortable in the process.

That brings me back to Mr. Williams.

Like any profession, ours isn’t immune to a bit of arrogance at times. But Williams didn’t just sketch upside down as a party trick or a clever client-pleaser. He did it as an act of quiet adaptation in a world that did not always welcome him.

Williams was African American. In that era, many white clients, shaped by the norms and prejudices of the time, would have felt uncomfortable sitting next to him at the conference table.

His upside-down drawings were more than a display of skill; they were a creative response to an unjust reality.

Much of his career was spent designing grand hotels and luxury homes in neighborhoods where he was not legally allowed to live or stay because of restrictive covenants and segregation laws.

In the face of that prejudice, he found ways to work around it with grace while still doing extraordinary work.

For me, that’s the deeper lesson behind the upside-down exercise. Yes, it sharpens your eye and improves your hand. But it also reminds us that sometimes the most powerful thing we can do—as designers and as people—is to change our angle of approach.

So what does that mean for those of us practicing today?

Most of us will never face the kind of barriers Paul Williams confronted. Yet we still encounter resistance—whether due to gender, age, or a lack of credentialing, education, or experience. Community pushback, even our own self‑doubt.

We may not be able to change those realities overnight, but we can change how we respond to them.

That’s where I find Williams’ upside‑down drafting so powerful as a metaphor. He took a situation that could have excluded him and, instead of walking away, he changed his position at the table—literally and figuratively. He altered his angle so he could keep doing excellent work and serve his clients well, even in an unfair system.

In 1923, he became the first Black member of the AIA. In 1957, he became the first Black member to be inducted into the AIA’s College of Fellows. In 2017, he became the AIA’s first—and so far only—Black Gold Medal recipient.

His story invites a quiet question: where in our own practice have we accepted the table as it is, instead of asking whether there’s another way to sit at it?

Williams was not alone. Many Black architects and designers, equally skilled and ambitious, faced similar barriers without his visibility or opportunities. Some sought out communities where their talent could flourish—places like Tulsa’s Greenwood District, later known as Black Wall Street—designing homes, hotels, theaters, schools, and civic buildings in neighborhoods that valued their abilities. Their work proved that when talent is the measure, not skin color, entire communities can thrive.

That success, of course, was fragile. The Tulsa race massacre of 1921 destroyed many of those buildings and displaced countless lives and careers.

A century later, the question of “seat at the table” still lingers. Black professionals make up only a small fraction of the design community—around 2%—even though we see greater diversity in the everyday spaces we design.

And in a field like ours, where many have themselves been underestimated—whether for being young, a woman, or non‑degreed—there’s a shared language about what it means to earn a place at the table.

For some, the barrier is an overt stereotype. For others, it’s quieter: the sense that Black talent must be extraordinary—on the level of Williams—just to be seen.

Many walk into rooms where no one looks like them and are treated, subtly or directly, as outsiders. And yet, they keep designing. They return to their studios, their clients, and their communities, producing exceptional work and, in many cases, choosing not to wait for a seat at someone else’s table, but to build their own.

As designers, we can do something similar. When a project, a relationship, or a barrier feels immovable, we can ask: Is there another way to sit at this table? Another vantage point from which to see the problem? Another way to draw the same line?

In the end, upside‑down sketching isn’t just a clever technique or a training exercise. It’s a reminder that sometimes the most meaningful progress comes not from forcing the world to turn, but from being willing to turn the page ourselves—and still draw something beautiful on it.