Keeping a Sketchbook is the Key to Everything

After my semester finished at the NYSS, the summer came around very suddenly. Between not working much, and overcoming health issues, I found myself in a completely different state of mind than the jam-packed year. The busy and every-minute-counts mentality of life in NYC was completely washed out by upstate life-no pressing obligations, time to kill, and a lot of empty space. I was sort of taken by surprise. As a result, I was torn between doing absolutely nothing and building a schedule out of thin air.

So I did absolutely nothing for a bit. And then I was struck by how devastating being lethargic can actually be to myself as a human being. It set in slowly. Day after day went by, waking up at noon, then 1pm, then 2pm. Staying up all night and sleeping all day. I got lots of sleep then didn't get any but it didn't matter because my structure-less routine left me. And then I began to feel unhappy and began to panic for myself as an artist-how long could this go on? In the back of my mind I felt I would always be safe, because after all, I'd go back to school at the end of the summer and be on a regular schedule again. But every time this happens, I begin to question my own integrity as a painter, or an artist, and I finally realized that nothing could really fill that need to make, to do things that challenged myself as an artist. I needed to start now. And then it dawned on me that I needed to get my sketchbook going regularly again.

The sketchbook is the key to making art a part of one's lifestyle.

I thought about how visual ideas develop. I realized that all great artists kept a sketchbook regularly as part of how they thought. A lot of times I think one can simply look at an artists work and then "get" it, and this is true in a way, but I have come to realize that anything that is made needs the act of making to be understood more fully.

One of the most influential things in my artistic life has been looking at different sketchbooks that great artists have kept. I have a copy of one of Cezanne's sketchbooks that I look at often, and have looked at lots of other sketchbooks that have been the building blocks, the "behind the scenes footage" of great works. Picasso's Demoiselles has behind it a massive amount of studies for each of the women, connecting back with visual ideas for other paintings, paintings in history he looked at, and so much more than is readily apparent, or could even be grasped by looking at the painting. I recently read a book on Matisse's journeys to Morocco, and the paper trail of sketches, drawings, and studies behind the painting The Moroccans is immense. The same is true for nearly every single work of art that I have looked at. It seems so simple when I think about it, but the fact remains that to develop visual ideas, thinking about them with my brain alone isn't enough. I need to think as often with my hands and eyes.

So over the past couple weeks I have tried to restart my visual literacy by scheduling in a few hours every single day to work on my sketchbook. I was surprised to find that I picked up a lot of other things in my life that had slacked off, such as learning Italian, going to the gym, and connecting with old friends. Once there is a set reason for doing anything, which for me happens to be making art, the rest of life follows, and life goes on in a way that makes perfect sense. Art becomes life, life becomes art, and the cycle continues.

Life lessons come from keeping a sketchbook in these temporary summer conditions.

Here's a couple of my sketches: