A confident mark
can often do more for
us than accuracy
12 carry a skeTchbOOk
ThaT yOu can LOve
This is important. If you don’t love
your sketchbook, you won’t want to
open it. You need books you want to
open and that you want to draw in.
I personally love Moleskines. They’re
my absolute favourite books by a
very large margin. They make me
want to fill them with sketches. This
makes me want to keep drawing. I’m
always excited to fill the last page
and start a new book. If we’re going
to do this stuff every day, we better
love every aspect of it.9 make DeLiberaTe marks
Practising specific marks is like practising writing. We know what an A is
supposed to look like or a D or a W. Once we know what those letterforms
look like, we know how we can squash them, stretch them or skew them to
achieve a desired effect. Similarly, if we know a handful of marks inside and
out, then we can use those few marks to achieve a broad range of results.
A confident mark can often do more for us than accuracy. A sketch with a
little funk in the anatomy and gorgeous mark making is far more interesting
than an anatomically perfect sketch with marks that are just, well, meh.10 contrast
oF shapes
Contrasting shapes add
visual interest. If you
draw everything with
curved shapes it’ll
become boring. Throw in
some angles and spice
things up.
If I’m working with
more detailed forms and
paying attention to how
the forms turn, I’ll apply
some graphic elements
to make the viewer look
twice. If I want a portion
of the drawing to be
more aggressive or more
soft, I’ll choose shapes
accordingly but I won’t
limit myself by saying it
all needs curves or all
needs angles. There’s
a panoply of shapes out
there and we should
make good use of them.11 keep the Marks new
Don’t just do a finished pencil sketch, only
to redraw it in inks. It’ll stagnate. Sometimes
I’ll go right in without a pencil sketch at all.
If I do a rough, I tend to do it very loose.
I like to keep myself guessing a bit. Staying
on my toes keeps me interested and the
sketch interesting. I don’t want to draw the
same thing twice.
Sometimes I may take the opposite
approach as well. I’ll put more information
in the rough than I’m going to use in the
final, just so I can edit along the way, but
in either case I’m always making decisions
and adding or omitting information. This
ensures that the final drawing is new and
as spontaneous as I can manage.74 August 2017
Workshops