BRIDGE AT UNION RIVER  Acrylic gouach on paper, 12x9 inches.

APPROACHING STORM AT BLUE HILL acrylic gouache on paer, 9 x 12 inches

UNDER THE CITY acrylic gouach on paper, 11 x 8 inches

BLUE HILL. acrylic on paper, 14 x 11 inches

THE OLD BOAT acrylic gouach on paper, 10x8 inches

WORKING BOATS< GREAT HARBOR acrylic gouache on paper, 14x 11 inches

LOOKING DOWN, acrylic gouache on paper, 11 x 9 inches

Sketches are so important to an artist perhaps because they are given little value. Behind most finished work are sketches of some kind that are rarely seen by the public. They are where ideas are tried out, where concepts first begin to take form. Words that come to mind about sketching are: Experiment, Discovery and Exploration.

The artist putting pen or pencil to paper feels no pressure to create a masterpiece. He is alone with his thoughts. It is the freedom from pressure that gives sketches their beauty and their power.

Since my days in college, I have always carried a sketchbook and drawn while sitting on the subway, waiting in a café, having a phone conversation. Sometimes in the quiet times, I allow my pen to draw whatever it wants, to follow the workings of the inner mind.

I use sketches to try out different compositions before painting in plein air. These can be very small “thumbnails” that take only a minute. They help me decide what will be included in the painting and what will be left out. Sometimes they point out problems that will likely occur when I start to paint. I have been known to completely change my idea after doing a few little sketches.

A sketch can become more than a quick study, instead developing into a finished work when all the right elements are in place: time, energy and the right subject.

It is very satisfying when this happens, especially because the piece usually has the urgency of a sketch, but is more realized and finished.

That word, “urgency”, is becoming more and more interesting to me these days. I enjoy highly polished paintings, but they sometimes lack the expression and fluidity of a sketch. There is a sense of being there with a sketch. In fact my loose sketches are teaching me looser techniques to use in my large studio paintings.

Looking at the sketches of artists whose work we usually see on museum walls, it’s as if we can look into their minds. We see how Degas studied the young ballet dancers before and during his series of paintings on the subject. In some drawings he changed the leg position, not stopping to erase the previous position. We are looking over his shoulder as he refines his ideas.

Van Gogh’s ink drawings are wonderful keys to understanding the development of his paintings. I look at the expressive lines and dots, the way he emphasized outline and structure. These things seem to translate exactly into paint. It appears he was emulating his own drawings when he worked in oils on canvas.

This summer I carried my sketchpad and gouache paints to the various places I visited. I sketched the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago and Maine. A few of these sketches are included in this newsletter. They may be seen as finished work or they may become larger studio paintings. Most of the thinking, however, is already done.