Another one bit the dust. Boom and a smouldering heap of gouache, canvas and ink died an unceremonious death. The idea I had as a sketch…

just did not translate into a painting (lucky Velofello has the original too).

It happens, it’s frustrating but that’s it. One has to deal with it. It got me thinking though why so often sketches are sometimes so much better than something more full blown. I think it’s a speed thing. A sketch is fast, a spewing of what’s in your head onto paper without wanting to be all uptight about it. As such, the spirit and character of the image comes over and ends up on paper.

Then it comes down to perception. Is a sketch lacking the merit of a fine work, something that took days, months? I always thought so but my mind is changing. My best work is where I sit down and just lay it down. Five minutes or five hours, I don’t think about it too much, I just do what’s in my head in one hit. My worst is where I labour over it for days. Apparently Hokusai painted his famous ‘The Hollow of the Deep Sea Wave off Kanagawa’ (Which if you don’t know is the very famous Japanese print of the big waves… and know one actually has been able to translate the title 100%) in an extremely short time after having thought about it for a long time. Maybe there is some truth to my thoughts of speed?

I have also started to question the appropriation of other images into one’s own work. Musicians do it all the time, samples are the mainstay of so much Hip Hop, Rap and other genres that using them is an accepted practice. Certainly in the realm of modern graphic design, sampling other’s vector art is, like in music, accepted…. many graphic designers, contrary to popular belief can not draw/illustrate. Somehow though, ’sampling’ is shunned upon when it comes to more traditional art. Not sure why.

This post is tagged Hokusai, japanese print, kanagawa, sampling, sketch, traditional art, vector art