Every July I go to our neighboring town’s library book sale, and even though I try not to go overboard, you can be sure I never come away empty-handed. This year I hit a minor jackpot and found two valuable books on sketching. I had never heard of Dale Meyers before snagging her book The Sketchbook, but with a bit of web research I have since learned that she was a well-respected teacher at the Art Students League of New York and had a solid reputation for her watercolor work. As one reviewer says about the book, its “a little dated (but) still rich in knowledge and technique”.

This and the other little thumbnails below measure about 2″ square…they’re tiny, but they pack a lot of information.

In the third chapter, The Sketchbook as a Manual, she talks about the importance of value study and how helpful it can be, before beginning a larger finished piece, to create a quick and tiny 3-value diagram that distills the subject into the simplest of geometric shapes.  By addressing not just the values, but also composition, one can solidify the basics of an image before committing too much time and paper to an idea that isn’t going to fly. There is also the added advantage that creating these little thumbnails regularly makes it easier to think in terms of value when working with color.

I like that this approach adds another layer of discovery that is one step beyond the simple viewfinder (written about in this post) I use to organize an image. Undertaken purely as practice, not solely as a preliminary to bigger work, it’s a way to effectively keep the wheels greased and efficiently gobble random waiting-time, wherever and whenever.

I have several softcover 3.5″ x 5.5″ Moleskine sketchbooks tucked into various pockets: in my purse, in my car, and even in the front of my life jacket for when kayaking. Yet they contain a lot of unfinished sketches because, due to the basic nature of trying to squeeze a quick drawing in between whatever else is going on while I’m out and about, I am invariably interrupted and need to move on before the drawing is complete. But, with Meyer’s speedy approach and 2 – 3 minutes at the most, I think just about any spare moment can become a learning opportunity.