Every image begins as something invisible.
A feeling. A word. A moment that passes before you can name it. The challenge of any creative process is the same : how do you take something felt and turn it into something seen ?
The first step is never drawing. It is removing.
Start with everything the idea could be. Every symbol, every reference, every visual that connects to the concept. Then begin cutting. What is the single most honest image of this feeling ? If it can be expressed with one line, why use three ? If one element carries the meaning, why add another ?
This is where the real work happens. Not in adding, but in questioning every addition.
The Sumi-e tradition understood this completely. A painter does not practice drawing a bamboo stalk until they get it right. They practice until they cannot remove anything else. The result is not simplicity for its own sake. It is clarity. The image that remains after everything unnecessary has been taken away.
An idea transformed into an image is not a translation. It is a distillation.
What survives that process is the only thing that needed to exist in the first place.