DRAWING IS YOUR SECOND SELF: Sketches & Studies

Drawing Is Your Second Self

Children do not need a reason to draw, and neither should we. To draw should be simply expressive and serve as the nonjudgmental phase of the artistic experience. It costs little in time, space, and resources. I believe sketching is the gateway to endless creativity.

Sketching is the first level for entering into the depths of our imagination. It is the most direct and personal reflection of the artist. Due to its directness and simplicity, the Masters’ sketches are prized and collected as an intimate glimpse into the depth of the artist’s soul.

Sketches 

Sketching is a warmup exercise. It’s improvisational, designed to let one leave behind those preconceived ideas. The goal is to capture a naïve impression in a relaxed non-judgmental way.

Sketching is a testimony of creative fidelity; practice maintains dexterity of heart, mind, and body. Its a way to enter the zone is to allow the flow to move, to loosen up. As a dancer stretches, we stretch our hand and eye to capture quickly what we perceive.

The sketching method is done in progressive stages. By using initial light, delicate, child-like poetic strokes followed by more purposeful strokes, it creates flexibility of the hand and the mind. Begin with a marker on inexpensive paper or charcoal on newsprint, then move to a more refined drawing instrument such as graphite on better paper.

Sketching is a process of syncing, creating a tapestry of images, threading the subject into an illuminated memory. This is a time to allow your unconscious to rise to the surface.

The delight in sketching is also experienced in the gaps in between each sketch.   All formal aspects of drawing, such as proportions or composition, are not important for the initial sketch. The sketch is the first step towards painting. Sketch, sketch and sketch. Repetition is practice; these are your musical scales.

Next, you would follow the steps in the drawing process towards painting on the canvas, such as studies leading to the drawing for composition and proportion, followed by a cartoon for transferring over your composition onto the canvas or a finished master drawing. 

If you feel fulfilled after multiple sketches, you may want to go directly to an actual illustration onto the canvas laying out the foundational elements in a wireframe.

Studies 

Studies are for what the word implies. Studies are for gaining insight, knowledge. The goal of study drawings is to come to a deeper understanding. Often, they are used as visual notes for finished works.

Do we need to study the proportions as to the whole? Need to work out the shapes with light and shadow? Use the dot as location and line as measurement for constructive analysis, and then move to shape then onto form. Yet, there is more to study drawings. Study drawings are for experiencing intimately how the subject speaks. We study the object of desire till it becomes the subject of our desire.

Studies are an embodied experience of the head and heart. What is this reality, and how does it speak to me? Here we naturally progress through the levels of visual acuity – looking, seeing, insight, visionary, and inspired. They are for encountering. We come to enter the world of our subject by using our senses in visual, physical, and imaginary ways. If it is a flower, we see it, smell it, touch its petals, jot down words describing it – a word sketch.  

For example, how does the edge of the dried autumn oak leaf speak, or how softly does the peony pedal sound? Are we attracted to its shape or its edges? An autumn oak leaf has sharp edges; if we touch its crispness, it will prick our fingers. While on the other hand, a peony pedal has a soft edge, so delicate, as if to caress a baby’s cheek.

 A line moves through the spaces crossing over itself creating shapes to become forms. Line quality is to be musical; it is to undulate and move through space giving life to the drawing. The oak leaf has sharp, crisp lines, while the peony lines drift softly onto the paper. We use line quality to capture visually how these speak.

In these encounters of study drawing, we come to discover more about ourselves and what visual words we want to speak.

Study Drawing Exercise

Studies are also a discipline in practicing how our hand moves in sync with what we perceive and what we desire to capture. Impressionists used sketches, studies, formal drawings, and tracings to capture the image before canvas work.

Studies can take from a few minutes to half an hour, or it can take a week-long retreat. This form of drawing is designed to present more information and in-depth expression. 

Mindfulness is an exercise in focusing on being aware of what we are sensing and feeling without judgment. In study drawing, we also focus on being aware of what we are sensing and feeling as in mindfulness, yet we take a different step it’s with judgment and analysis. 

Take several different types of unrelated objects of various sizes and textures and do at least 3 study drawings of this grouping, not more than 5.  Notice what has changed from your first study to the last.  

Drawing

Drawing are based with the Academy with a formality, they are a finished piece. Is when proportion, composition, size relationships, tonality comes into play.

Cartoons 

Are outlines of drawings that become tracings for transferring onto the picture plane.

Master Drawing 

Are finished works usually with special materials using unique and highly skilled methods such as silver point or pen and ink cross hatching.