You know those beautiful sketchbooks that some people keep, with detailed drawings inside of them that might as well be framed?
Well—of course—I don’t have a beautiful sketchbook. I don’t have a sketchbook at all, really, because my sketches look like this:
Small, and very scribbly. To keep them together in a big ol’ bound book would just be ridiculous and sad. (Can you even guess what they are? They’re meant to be for two separate images but I kinda like what’s happening there between ‘em.) I used to be embarrassed, but I’ve finally accepted the fact that I’m an ugly sketcher. These pencil scraps are just a way for me to get an idea down quickly—and that’s all. No collages or fancy nonsense, at least not anymore. (It might help that I’m out of school. Professors who demand sketchbooks usually aren’t prepared for mine.)
Sometimes part of a sketch will actually make it into the final version, though. For my most recent drawing, I quickly sketched the mermaid’s hands like this for placement (click to biggify):
… but after creating that rockin’ keytar, I decided I liked her hands—so they stayed. It makes me happy when this sort of stuff happens, because you can’t really plan it. A drawing remains a sketch to me until the very last steps. So… it’s cool if my first step sucks, right?