WHAT 2018 NEEDS

My best illustrations, or at least my work that I'm most fond of, have all come, initially, from sketches. There are different types of sketching. It can be a deliberate study to help an artist get started on their big painting. Sometimes sketching is part of a shared artists' challenge that's meant to push the artist and share immediately online. Other times it's just absent-minded doodling.


What I'm talking about, though, is different. My kind of sketching is taking paper and pencil or watercolors wherever I go and observing. It's something I used to do casually, but I didn't realize it's value to me until I spent a month away from home: not wanting to share unremarkable photos from my trip, I made sketches in place of snapshots. They turned out to hold more memory for me than snapping a digital picture ever has. Sketching like that can involve patience and determination, but it's also relaxing as it's the best way for me to take in the present.


Deliberate, observational sketching is something I got away from a lot last year. I was too busy with the new projects and goals I had set for myself to make time for just sitting and drawing a couple of hours. Over the holidays, however, I forced myself to slow down and take some time to rest, which mostly meant reading and sketching. Honestly, I think some of those December sketches are my favorite things that I made in 2017.


Now I've got not so much a New Year's resolution as a determination to make time for a key part of my work that was missing. A few weeks back I began writing out some plans and goals for 2018, but I didn't even put sketching on the list! December and January tend to be about taking stock of what's missing from our lives (whether we intend for them to or not). January is here, and I'm seeing that more sketching is just what 2018 needs.



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