The Progression of a Quick Sketch

I guess the end of the year is pretty jam-packed for most folks. It's usually that way for me, anyway.

So, I'm finally getting caught up with a few tasks I set aside, including getting recent life drawings sprayed, photographed, inventoried and stored. Simply making the drawings at the model sessions is only part of the art-making process.
Those three minute warm-up sketches, and longer pose studies of twenty minutes or so sound easy enough to make... right?

But first I have to get to the model sessions. That's over an hour's drive each way (and a lot longer if it's snowing or foggy). Participation in the artists' salon where our model poses for us is a weekly commitment that consumes half my day, driving and drawing.

And that's after I have gotten my ducks in a row. I must have supplies at the ready, paper ordered and in my big satchel with drawing board, charcoal and chalk. (Reminder to self: it's time to find some more of that nice soft white chalk and order a bunch. I'm down to the crumbs. Now where DID I get that stuff?)

After I'm back home with drawings, there is still work to do. I clean up smudges and lines on the sketches I want to save. Some I don't bother to keep. Occasionally, I'll work on a few of the sketches to bring out form or contrast. A sunny day works best for taking photos of each sketch and then spraying them with fixative outdoors. I use a spray recommended by the National Gallery (never hair spray as some people do). As with my other art materials and methods, I try to make good choices that will help my work last for the special people who are my collectors.

After the photo documentation and the spray, I label each sketch with a title and copyright information, and give it a unique inventory number. Photos are uploaded from the camera, tweaked in Photoshop to adjust color and contrast, and then images are filed digitally. The best ones get uploaded to my DailyPainters gallery and here to my blog. Each sketch is then documented in my inventory file, and physically stored in acid-free flat files until someone buys it or I frame it for exhibition.

So, three minutes is actually more like three days. I never was very good with the passage of time.