using a marking knife to make reference lines.
There have been occasional threads on marking. One thread was all about how using a red pencil would improve ones sawing accuracy.
A knife with a thin blade makes an almost imperceptible line. One of mine is made from a piece of old saw plate. It is my mostly used for transferring cut lines when cutting dovetails.
My other two marking knives are made from an old plane blade. They leave a clear line to follow. Often after marking the lines around a piece the knife is flipped bevel down and used to remove a slice of wood along the line to make a 'knifed wall' to help with sawing.
It wasn't until I moved all my swing arm lamps to my work area that I started to improve
I made a bench dog using a hollow auger. The scrap left at the end was drilled to fit the pin at the end of one of my swing arm lamps. I have another on a stand made with a crude tripod and a piece of pipe. Getting light were you want/need it is part of the job.
Now if I can only learn to keep myself from trying to control the saw...
That can be one of the difficult parts of learning to saw well and proper.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)