I agree with Dan Lewis.
“All experts practice their skills”. I do, I am a designer, I train designing stuff every single day (well, monday to friday). That is my skill. My employer pays me to tell our enginneers what I want and how I want it. I do a LOT of this with sketches. But my boss doesn’t give a shit if I sketch my designs or dance them. The sketches I do are mostly rough dooodles, usually no perspective, no details, nothing and most of them are done within a few seconds. I don’t think you need to have good technical sketching skills at all to “think on the page”. Even most of our engineers do it without any formal drawing training. Those thinking doodles are nothing you will ever show to a client. Usually we show them prototypes. If we need fancy marker renderings the intern will do it. But honestly? I don’t think most clients give a shit either if you give them pretty sketches or not. I don’t remember a time a client actually got really excited about a sketch. A physical prototype makes them always around a thousand times more happy, guaranteed. How often do you practice your skills at design model building? When was the last time you were sanding foam to get the shape juuuuuust right? Isn’t that an essential design skill as well?
Yeah, many people seem to think “good sketch” = “good design”. Churning out cars and sneakers on a daily basis that all kinda look the same (which is what 90% of instagram famous designers do) - that’s not design, that’s a partytrick. Where are the ideas? Where is the innovation? Being a designer means having a specific mindset, not having perfect lineweight.