When was the last time you sketched?


I recently returned to sketching every day. I was spurred on by a youtube video by  #AndrewTischler . He encouraged this in his project called #sketchendeavor. I hadn't done this in years. I also stumbled across a sketchbook that actually suited my way of working.  Being a lefty, I got tired of turning books upside down and working away from spiral bindings. I found that Arteza has a great little watercolor sketchbook that opens flat offering a panoramic option that has both a rough and smooth surface for both dry & wet media.
I made sketching a habit once again by incorporating my sketching into a time that I knew I'd be consistent in picking up a pencil and pad. The time was while watching some TV in the evening. As a landscapist, I certainly was not outside at this time sketching, instead I was drawing landscapes from memory. I have a vocabulary of images of trees, rocks, streams, mountains, fields etc. gathered in my mind over years of observation. This was not to be a sketchbook en plein air, no this was to be a place where I could doodle, creating notans. Some sketches were just ideas jotted down, some more finished . Thinking with pencil in hand, my work improved. As I moved through the pages of my sketchbook, arranging and rearranging shapes and values, I could see the progress. I found my strengths and most importantly my weaknesses.
I've always been at odds with the fact that I liked my sketches more than my paintings. The paintings just seemed to lose something going from sketching to painting.
My discoveries in solving this problem and taking my work from doodles to final paintings will be the topic this blog will follow over the next few weeks.
Join me! Sketch each day for this next week. Jot down questions in the margins ...play and check back with me next Sunday!

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