Do I draw differently on loose sketches?

My studio is often in a mess and I'm working on creating some order in my day to day habits. One of the things that contribute to the mess are loose sketches. These are sketches outside of my monthly "official" sketch book. They can be on loose printer paper or in these smaller strips of sketching paper (that are actually excess paper from the paper supplier).

Do I draw differently on these loose sketches? I realise I do. I'm a lot more care-free, because they are not part of a bigger collection of sketches. They are like scrap paper I doodle passing thoughts on. I feel more free to try out more anything on them, random, half-baked, to satisfy an impulse to just draw something, anything. If a drawing is really bad...no, let's not use "bad or good drawings". I don't like the idea of a "correct" drawing. Let's go with, if I don't like a drawing, I don't mind throwing it away. So oftentimes, I do find rather surprising and daring approaches to drawing that I don't find in my usual sketchbook. You could say, these loose sketches are part of my experiment time

I do carry these papers out with me, slotted between a hard cover, bound with one of my daughter's hair band, kind of like a mini sketchbook. But when I'm done with them, they are loose again. 

Here, one of my rolling date stamps had expired (Didn't go pass 2023), so I cut out the months strip and tried it out as a flat stamp on paper. Oops, but I stamped it upside down, but I didn't mind! I was also playing with drawing lines with watercolour, instead of a pen. And then I practiced painting shapes without lines, will a bit of gel pen lines over for definition. What about those pencil random pencil scribbles over the drawings? That was there earlier, when I passed the paper over to my 2yr old son to doodle over. He doodled on the bottom sketch too where I drew my wife maybe at a bakery. I found that the scribbles actually added some texture and fun to the drawing. A happy accidental discovery-  something I might not have discovered using my more "official" sketchbook which I'm more precious about.










Comments

Tara Kate said…
I’ve watched this loose sketch video at least twice already. I find these sketches really inspiring! I’m pretty good about letting myself experiment in my sketchbooks but as I’ve started trying to draw comics, I’ve noticed that I get precious at times. I like the idea of creating a way of keeping scraps of paper together, like a sketchbook, but with the freedom to discard them so easily. Thanks for sharing, Drew!