Welcome to a Happy Sketching Place

What is The Sketchbook Hypothesis ?

Welcome and thank you so very much for joining me at the Sketchbook Hypothesis.  The sketchbook part is obvious, and the hypothesis part is really very simple, I believe that making art makes you happy, and I keep filling sketchbooks to prove that!  The looking, the seeing, the doing, the making conjure up a wonderful happy state of mind that was much more natural to us when we were children, but it's one we desperately need to cultivate to keep our busy, stressful adult lives in balance.

Why Sketching?

Sketching is to the visual arts as an impromptu jazz jam session is to music. It's spontaneous, free flowing, experimental, exciting,  lively, and often unconventional. It can also be calming, meditative and focusing.

Maria Montessori taught us that Play is the work of the child.  I think that sketching is the play of the adult and just as a child's play teaches them many things in a natural, fun way that makes them happy, sketching does the same for adults.

Sketching is accessible. The materials needed are minimal, and relatively inexpensive. It's portable and can be done anywhere. Sketching has never ending possibilities. It can also be incredible meaningful helping us see the beauty in the ordinary, and capture moments of life that would otherwise be lost forever.

By looking closely, which is necessary for sketching, we see, and learn to cherish so much of life that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Who can Sketch? 

Everyone. Period. Yup, even you. The oldest known cave art comes from the Cave of El Castillo in northern Spain, and may be more than 40,000 years old. None of the artists ever went to art school. The work is breathtaking and powerful.

This particular image known as Horses from the Hillaire Chamber, Chauvet cave, is 30,000 years old. 

Drawing is a skill, and in the 19th century was taught as a regular part of a bourgeois education and most educated people could draw, and paint with watercolors  reasonably well. Certainly well enough to keep a travel sketchbook or nature journal two popular pastimes of the era.

Just begin. The magic and happiness is in the doing, not necessarily in the finished product. Making art will make you happy.