I find that I really cannot sketch in the same sense that every other artists can sketch. Even though my brain understands that it is a “sketch” in the sense that it can just be a few lines that tell the artist the idea in his/her head that only he/she can understand or discern. However, every time I sketch, and I looked at it and it’s not a complete picture, I feel weird and icky inside. I’m not sure how to describe it.
I decided to stop fighting with my inner self and give in and do what it wants me to do. So … I started doodling, just mindless scribbles with my ball point pen, any ball point pen. In fact, free ones are even better, you know, the ones they leave out for you to take in hotel rooms, banks, conferences, job fairs, technological expos, etc.
The other quirkiness that I decided to stop fighting with myself about is the fact that I have to draw in a pre-defined area. I can’t just draw loosely in one area of a page and leave the rest blank. It bothers me to no end and I find that I have to completely fill the page with something, anything else. So … I made little rectangles in my sketchbook, perfectly dividing the page into rectangles with (almost) perfect spacings between them. Unless it is already one of those really tiny sketchbooks, then I just made a boundary around the page.
As I scribble, it’s like my fingers are just rambling and my mind sort of wanders and I’m not even paying attention to what’s on the paper most of the time. Then I see something in the scribble and I try to draw it out, no pun intended. Sometime I do have brief flashes of an idea before I start. That’s when it’s a lot of fun to refine the idea in scribbles.
This video presents the scribbles I did so far. It’s a pretty big sketchbook, even with the beginning portion of the sketchbook filled with other sketches from my Legendeer trip.
