Getting sketchy

Nothing frees the soul and stokes the imagination like the dance of sketching on paper. No expectation, no critic to impress, no dressing up, no setting up.

I had been instructed using large pads on an easel with well sharpened charcoal sticks in a holder, but have found equal or more satisfaction and joy with a gel writing pen on scrap laser printer paper. And letting my hand, wrist and elbow move freely, I have come up with some impressive little doodles and figures, which, if they do not aspire to a larger more developed work, exist as their own small completed work. For the longest time, I kept a tiny doodle which I believe was rendered while I was not looking, just my hand dragging the pen a bit while I was concentrating on something else. It looked like a sort of cartoonish smily face. It was on that brown paper we covered textbooks with in grade school. Bic ball point most likely.

It could be to work out representing a figure position, to establish the dark and light extremes of a landscape, or to put down on paper a scene you have been viewing only in your imagination. The generally monochromatic nature of a sketch seems to facilitate the representation of my own dreams and imaginative scenes, which do not prioritize color.

Pencil on pad? Ink on kraft paper? White chalk/black paper? China marker/newsprint? Experimenting is invigorating. Do it like you have not done before. Dance in unusual places. Dance often.