Benefits Of Keeping A Sketchbook

Many people have been asking me 'Why I keep a sketchbook'.

After answering that question several times I've decided to write a blog post on it and keep up regular posts on art tips about sketching. 

Well, where to start? Sketching is such a broad topic and an incredibly personal avenue of the art process. However, there are some essential principles we can pull from it that we will discuss here. So look forward to more on sketchbooks later since I can't cover it all in one post!

What is sketching?: The most concise answer I can think of is this; 

Sketching is your own way of inputting data into your visual library.

'What is a Visual Library' you ask?  

'Visual Library': 

Visual Libraries are the images you've seen, drawn and actually have 'on file' to draw. 

When people say they're drawing from imagination or from memory...that's drawing from their visual library. Here's the thing though, 

"Until you draw it. It will not be in your Visual library."

Many think if they simply look at things in life, on Google or any other place, that they're 'well versed' in images. They fool themselves into thinking they have a broad visual understanding of the world they live in.  I'm here to burst that bubble.

Until someone actually spends the time to draw something from life, experience, memory or even an image, they will not truly understand the lines, shapes, values, forms, textures, color, spatial relations, unity, volume, weight or any of the many  qualities of reality. But once they draw it, it becomes theirs. It becomes that artist's, interpretation of that thing he/she sees, and will forever be in that artist's Visual Library.

So sketching becomes an essential tool for any artist that wants to expand their visual library. It makes drawing more fun, intriguing, fulfilling and powerful. Keeping a sketchbook is an artists way of not only expressing themselves (like some do with a journal), but a place to study the world around them. It's a place they can combine existing things with strange oddities invented in their wonderfully creative brains. 

But all that creativity...where does it come from?

It comes from exercising those creative muscles of ours...in our sketchbooks. Have you ever wondered just how an artist came up with that crazy robot, or wild environment, monster or character? I'll bet if you looked closely at the pieces that made up that particular image, you'd find out that, all of the individual parts are quite ordinary. 

Take this sketch of mine from 2004 for instance...

Pretty strange creature, I know. But lets break it down. On the surface, it looks like an other-worldly animal. However, as we look at the visual library that the parts and pieces were taken from you can begin to see things like the musculature of the legs and shoulders are, whatta ya know...human. I simply elongated and bulked up some of the proportions to give the idea of strength and speed. The eyes were really more or less inspired by fish eyes, the jaw and mouth...i'm pretty sure I picked that up from the Predator movies. etc.

Pretty soon you begin to see how I pulled from my visual library on this image.

So, Why keep a sketchbook? Top 10 Reasons.

1. Practice. There is no shortcut for this, it will make your images look more confident and believable. 
2. Expand your visual Library and own the images you sketch. This will allow you to find your interpretation of the world around you.
3. Study difficult subject matter and smooth out the wrinkles in your understanding.
4. Inspire yourself.
5. Quick visual language notes (do you see a detail on a bridge you never noticed before, make a quick sketch of it and add it into your visual library with a study later).
6. Experiment. (Different content, combinations of ordinary things or mediums like paint, charcoal and ink).
7. Keep your arm warmed up all the time.
8. Be a walking billboard (people know me as an artist mostly because I always have my sketchbook with me).
9. Outlet. You're a creative person, it's a part of who you are..so let it out in the most beneficial way possible!
10. A place to revise and experiment before a project. (in middle school when they told you to practice your presentation with your group 5 times before the actual oration, and you didn't do it...compare that to the confidence and fluid presentation you gave in college when you actually DID practice...point made).

So, stay tuned, next time, i'll be talking about some of the specific methods I use in my sketchbook to keep things interesting and fun, how I decide on what to draw and much more!



Check out some of my sketches below!

So, I'll be posting a few of these sketches here and there for all to take a look at. Of course they aren't super polished or anything, heck, they're sketches!  I usually do them during church haha.