Ever try to saw a straight line? I don’t mean hacksawing a curtain rod to fit your window. I mean straight: true, plumb and parallel on both sides of the cut.
The practice cuts you see above, in all their imperfect glory, were not made by a newbie. They were made by a professional woodworker working with a sharp saw. His name is Joel, and he writes a nice blog that lives in an addictively readable website for a very cool maker of hand woodworking tools in Brooklyn called Gramercy Tools. He was documenting the process of relearning this basic skill with his workspace set up in a new way.
I count 15 cuts. Some of them are skewed. Some wander off the path. Some are OK. The last one is true from any angle and was made without following a guide. Do that with your next ad assignment and not only will you wind up with a good ad, you’ll know it.
A parting koan from Joel the woodworking sensei:
…the more I practice the less scared I am of screwing up, and then I don’t screw up.
Belly of the Beast 