The Power of The Thumbnail Sketch is Underestimated

This week I went through old sketchbooks to escape the snow and cold weather

It snowed this week; more than once. March…..it is either in like a lion and out like a lamb, or in like a lamb and out like a lion here in the midwest. Do any other parts of the country use that saying or is this just a Midwest thing — leave me a message below?

Thrice we woke up to snow that wasn’t originally in the forecast. I needed to paint something that made me forget the cold, so I dove into my old stacks of notebooks and sketchbooks looking for trees with leaves to warm me up.

If you are not an artist you probably still have seen pages from the sketchbooks of Leonardo Da Vince showing all his inventions and the iconic drawing of a man with stretched out arms and legs in a circle— “Vitruvian Man”. Sadly for others, my sketchbooks are not that interesting. Note books for artists closer resemble private visual diaries or journals — at least mine do. Most artists won’t even show you their sketchbooks if you are not also an artist — even then they hesitate because rarely does the shorthand one artist uses in them mean much to the next artist.

Often at workshops I pass my notebooks around the class to encourage students to draw more. If they see how ugly and unkept the pages of mine are, maybe they won’t give up on their own and will begin to use sketches more. I believe artist catalogs and art magazines do a disservice to young artists by showing how well done sketches are in sketchbooks for promotion purposes. The reality is, most sketchbook pages really suck — they should show those pages in their ads, then maybe more artists wouldn’t give up trying to draw. Yet, there’s gold “in deem der pages.”

(I use 6x9 sketchbooks in a Derwent traveling drawing organizer)

This week the sketchbooks once again became inspiration for a few works on paper. when I leafed through them, it was like a walk down memory lane as I saw many tiny images that now were large paintings created from them. Maybe it is nostalgia creeping its narcissistic little head in, but a visit through them more often might help me realize what I’ve accomplished on those days when I think I am standing still artistically.

What surprised me was how often I found new designs in their pages that I now wanted to paint—but years ago when the drawings were created I did not see anything of interest in them and moved on. And, I found myself wanting to paint again from many thumbnails that I already have painted. Van Gogh had his sunflower series (Yes, he did paint more sunflowers than the one image continually reprinted). Monet painted in series — his water lilies, the parliament buildings, and hay stacks just to name a few. The sketch books helped me realize I need to revisit some of the same designs.

Seeing the stacks and thumbing through them also made me regret all those years I resisted using sketchbooks for anything other than drawing classes or modeling sessions as a way to get together with artist friends.

I never realized at the time I created each page how much more powerful the tiny 2 -10 minute sketches would become over time. As I get older, I find myself more often reaching for the stack of notebooks against one wall of my studio table.

Sketchbooks for me are a treasure trove. If a fire broke out and I could only save one thing, it would be my sketchbooks. Because with them, I could recreate any painting lost or make new anything from them.

Share your experience….?