Archive for the 'Portraits' Category

Today’s sketch is somewhat of a sneak peek at something that I am cooking up… sorta. It might take a little while longer until the finished product is ready!

I am trying to get into the habit of creating more ‘finished’ work. I love sketches – adore them to bits… I think that there is a wonderful immediacy, sense of movement and style that comes with swift pen-strokes, guide marks and all the little errors that go into making a picture. I believe it to be an art of its own. That said, I’ve neglected doing anything really ‘finished’ for quite a while.

I think, in part, it has to do with the fact that I love sketching – and I also love the finishedness (that totally isn’t a word) that comes with completing a truly great sketch. You know, at that point, that the sketch is the best it is going to be. Perhaps it could be further enhanced by doing something derivative from it, but the reality is that putting it into any other form will change it.

For today though, I am going about it differently. The idea came first, the internal visualization came second, the sketches were actually only a nutting out of the final product because I work better with a good solid base (it lets me sort out some of the bigger problems ahead of time and sort out the general foundation of the picture) than starting from scratch trying to work immediately on the vectors.

I think that going into the sketches knowing that they are really only a rough guide for another work makes it easier to detach myself from them. When I sketch to produce a… well… ‘finished sketch’ it is different from when I am sketching to produce something else. I don’t know exactly what it is that defines that difference though – perhaps a measure of investment, or an understanding of the clear potential it has as a product in another form. Either way… hopefully the finished pictures for which this sketch was a quick study for will be up in a few days.