The Discipline of Daily Sketching

Today, in my attempts to start sketching diligently again, I dragged out some old, dusty college sketchbooks. I find it sometimes helps to look back at older work in order to motivate myself to move forward. It's like I can see what worked and what didn't work in different approaches I've taken in the past.

During a drawing class in college, I had a professor who made us persistently sketch for at least a half hour every day. Though it was sometimes difficult to make time to sketch so often between all the other classes and course work, I ended up being thankful for this discipline (this professor also liked to say that "discipline frees you" which I also love).

I found a style I enjoyed by being consistent with my sketchbook. I was free to explore and experiment on the pages of a sketchbook that no one would be critiquing. These days, I don't have an art professor grading me on the merits of my dedication to my sketchbook; it's up to me to keep plugging away, finding the things that inspire or move me and recording them dutifully in my nonjudgmental sketchbook.

I suppose it's like other tools of creative professions - the private journals or rough drafts of a writer, the hours of unheard practice by a musician - the more you employ it, the greater your potential for growth. I know this isn't always the case for artists. I had another prof in college who never sketched, but is a master painter whose work has hung in the Smithsonian. I guess to each his own. But, for me, looking back and seeing how the sketchbook has worked, I've decided it's time to get back to the art of daily sketching.

*The first sketch was taken from a portrait out of National Geographic and the second sketch was a study of one of Andrew Wyeth's paintings. Both are meant only to show studies in drawing.*