Sketchy

I once heard that Leonardo De Vinci burned all his sketches before he died and in my teenage years this seemed, to me, ideal even if untrue. I myself hated sketching. I hated the reality of failure and I abhorred the idea of collecting my sketches in a book which would serve as a constant reminder of my own lack of “natural” talent. I wanted my art to be flawless and magical. I wanted it to seem easy. Because of this I sketched on loose paper for many years. Failures were always discarded.
Then in high school I met Beau Sia and all this changed for me because he was a great artist who seemed to thrive from sketching. I remember going to his house and seeing a stack of 5 or so sketchbooks sitting in the corner full of success and failure, process and progression. I was impressed. For Beau good art was not the product of magic but simply hard work. It was at that exact moment that art changed for me. I bought my first sketchbook and slowly broke the habit of tearing my failed efforts from it.
Today I love to sketch. The pile of sketches I have now collected resembles the stack of Beau’s work that initially inspired me. In fact through the years, as I have struggled with style, composition, subject and color, sketching has remained my constant love. Although I have gone for long periods of time without producing artworks I have never stopped sketching. To this i believe I owe my current success: a greater satisfaction in the art works I produce.