On Sketching
Why does anyone sketch? And I don’t mean, “Why does anyone make Art?” But rather why are there people who sit around sketching—not as an exercise in creative expression or even in preparation for such—but for its own sake? How are we to explain the odd people who camp out in public parks on sunny days to covertly sketch profiles of absolute strangers? Those creatures who sit for hours at a time in museums turning out detailed sketches of old sculptures and paintings the likes of which already exist and which will have no future more illustrious than that of records of their maker’s spare afternoons?
Yes, it’s an easy enough thing to understand why some people sketch Gratia Artis—why a person might sketch a thousand passing faces to sketch that one face that’ll define an era in the Louvre. But these other people—who are neither artists nor aspiring ones—what do they get out of sketching? It must be something. After all, they’re everyw…
