Sketch Books

I'm surprised at how many I've filled.

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Over the decades, I've kept a variety of sketch books. Most of them ended up being ambushed for projects with pages ripped out so I could have a clean sheet to create an ad for newspapers or a menu for a restaurants. (It seemed I never had proper loose sheets for these.) Some are still reasonably intact, and as I thumb through them, I come across mostly doodling—I wouldn't call them sketches—with colored pencils or Rapidograph pens. Sometimes I sketched my cat.

When I became a serious painter, I began to draw, usually to collect plein air references for studio paintings. I considered these drawings to be throwaways, but some of them are quite elegant. Even so, I made them in cheap little books with spiral bindings. As most artists know, books with spiral bindings tend to smear because the pages rub against each other. I regret not using a better quality of book—one saddle-stitched so the pages don't rub—for the nice drawings.

But it wasn't until the Pandemic that I got serious about actually sketching. Sketching for me is drawing from life, but also painting in color, with no purpose other than to observe. In the case of the pandemic, sketching also became a way to chill. For the duration of the Pandemic, I went out every afternoon for about an hour to work in gouache, observing the cliffs in the canyon behind my studio while listening to the canyon wrens and the ravens.

(Above is a video you might have missed. I apologize for the low volume.)

Sketching became a habit, and even today, I continue to sketch regularly. Not necessarily every day, but a few times a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. For a little while, I gave up gouache sketching to work with an ink brush, and I modified these sketches occasionally with black casein or gouache to add shading. Gouache was about color, ink about form.

While going through my shelves, looking for a fresh Pentalic Aqua Journal, my favorite band, I came across the stack of filled ones. I was surprised at how many I've gone through in just a few years. As with my writing journal, which I've been keeping for over 50 years, one page at a time, the pages build up. Step by step, feet turn into yards and yards become miles.