What I think drawing does for the artist, is to inform the mind. As I take time to draw a thing, I learn more about the way it’s made- the bark of different trees or the way leaves cluster on branches, characteristics of the shoreline along slow or fast moving water, the way groups of petunias stand, or geraniums, or peonies, and so on. As I paint with knives, much of this doesnt come into play like it would with brushwork, but it still informs my work and, I think at least, makes it better than it might otherwise be.

Drawing from life teaches you how to compensate and correct as needed and keeps you seeing “in the round”. It’s also how you train your eye to know what “right” is. I know that that sure changed for me from when I was just trying to draw from photos on my own and when I finally got three years of traditional drawing instruction at the Academy of Art University. I look back at my pre-art school drawings and I could go on for a long paragraph about all the things I never saw back then. And worse, had no idea that I didn’t see.

From what I have seen over the years, a drawing done quickly, with knowledge and competence, has an energy and freshness that is very often (but not always) lacking in more deliberate work. You could say the same thing about small preliminary color studies too. There are a lot of illustrators who would far rather have one of Norman Rockwell’s color studies than one of his finishes for precisely that reason. They have a special dash and sparkle.

Some of my recent live animal pen and ink sketches from the Denver Zoo are on my blog, along with some finished drawings for notecards, but I’ll try to be a good girl and do my homework this next week and post the result Maybe I’ll take a swing at the kittens I’m fostering for the next month or so. They have to slow down or rest sometime. I think.