One of my goals this year is to use the art of sketching more. That means trying to sketch on a regular basis. Recently I had reorganized my art studio and found several sketch books with only one or two pictures in them. I realized that I would become motivated to use the art of sketching for short spurts of time and then become very self critical of my perceived lack of talent in that area. So on this trip I planned ahead and brought a small 5″x7″ sketch book with me with a goal to get me through my insecurities with drawing. Yesterday morning I went out to the park across from the house to sketch the blooming trees there. First thing I noticed that I hadn’t packed my pencils. So I borrowed a broken one from one of my grandkids. 
You will notice it didn’t even have an eraser. Then I walked around the park path and was able to sketch 3 nice settings before it started to rain. 
While I enjoyed this process, drawing in small scale on a 5″x 7″ page turned out to be difficult for me. I would quickly run out of room as soon as I drew the main feature. Anyway I thought you would like to see the pictures of what it looked like while I was sketching and the finished product. Simplify, simplify,simplify your designs on your way to your finished project was one of the first lessons I learned concerning design interpretation. Too many elements in your design sometimes distracts you from what you are trying to portray. The other thing you have to take into account is when you apply paint to fabric sometimes it goes where it wants to and doesn’t stay inside of the line. 
So using less structure is better. For example the sketch on the right is my first sketch of the park entrance. I drew in a lot of elements to represent the flow of the sidewalk and fence. I think it looks a little too chaotic . So definitely it needs to be streamlined. When I paint it there will be too much color overlapping and no light spaces. What I want you to consider is even though I don’t see myself as a trained drawer, I don’t have to be to use the art of sketching. Sketching is a good way to create balance in your design. Then you take that drawing and find the elements you want to use to make the idea happen. For instance I might use one of my tree reference books to get the pattern for the trees. I could use the original picture, blow it up, print it out in greyscale and use that for the sidewalk layout. The sketch and picture combo lets me get the heights of the trees right to make you look down the sidewalk following it to the horizon line. I plan to do more sketching on my trip and am thankful my daughter Suzanne who took me to get a larger sketch pad and new pencils. This way I won’t be making excuses to as why I am not sketching today. By the way if you decide to use the art of sketching your sketches will probably only be seen by you and so don’t use that as an excuse to not use this technique. Hopefully by sharing my sketches you will see how simple it can be to get a design concept going. It is so important to get beyond what you think you can’t do to grow into what you want to do. I was wondering if any of you use a sketch book to create your new designs? If so how has it worked out for you?….Karen
