Improvisation per definition does not stem from an explicitly preconceived idea – that which is improvised is not directed towards achieving a specific performative goal and therefore cannot be measured or understood in this way. However, the ad hoc accomplishment of that which is unplanned, or literally ‘unforeseen’ (from the Latin improviso), is not without certain prerequisites, as ‘ad hoc’ would seem to imply. Improvisation necessarily depends on the skill of the artist, who possesses the required means and potential to operate intuitively. Because improvisation is only expressed in its performance, it is through the improvisational that the artist as a genuine creator visibly emerges. The more the artist clearly displays the performance's disconnection from any type of previously thought-out concept, the more his artistic brilliance shines forth. Yet in order to appreciate this achievement, the beholder must be in a position to fully comprehend improvisation as a creative process. Improvisation must therefore reveal the artist's command of communicative competence.

Within the field of fine arts, it is the visual forms whose final outcomes are left in some way indeterminate that provide space for intuition and allow the beholder to experience the processual aspect of improvisation. In the practice of sketching, as well as in alla prima painting, where the work often intentionally appears to be unfinished in order to introduce the viewer to the stages involved in its production, it is first and foremost the sureness of the stroke that seemingly guarantees its spontaneous execution.