Maintaining a ligature to life

I began keeping sketchbooks as part of my work habits about fifteen years ago. Because life is the disjointed and unpredictable thing that it is,  I found there was a real need for something I could do, incrementally, to keep  my work on track in the spare moments I would find throughout the week.

As I looked  closely at all of the artist’s I admired, I realized that they were  always planning things on paper,  always leaving abundant sketches and drawings in their wakes.  I knew my own work needed more thought, and my observational and figurative skills constantly required  practice. Also, I did not cotton to the idea of relying on photographs;  much of the work I loved was painted before the era of the camera took hold, and I wanted to see if I could train my mind’s eye to capture the essential things around me.

Beginning with the sketches of Rembrandt, (and later  artists like Menzel,  Fantin LaTour,  Sargent, Constable, and so many others), such drawings became, for me,  exquisite examples of artists thinking aloud on paper.  I realized that one constant occupation of these artists was visual involvement with the world around them.

Concurrently,  my reading of “Harvey Dinnerstein:  Artist at Work” impressed me very much. I recommend this book as it discusses the painters’ life in terms relevant to modern times.   Like artists of the past, he’s drawn upon the life immediately around himself as a subject, using personal friends, students, and family members as models.  And he is a fluent sketcher,  from whose work  I learned this critical lesson: to always draw and paint ideas, not pictures.

So, I continue to use my time observing and sharpening myself, squirreling  away the details of what lies about me. Here are some of my  sketchbook works from the last few years, done for their own sake or as a study for something that may become realized more fully later.