One thing that will forever change the way you sketch

Because goal setting will take you so much further than random criticism

I often draw with groups of urban sketchers. At the end of these sketching sessions we do a ‘throw-down’, which means that we all put our sketchbooks together on the ground for everyone to look at. If your are open for it, you can learn a lot from these ‘throw-downs’. Put five people next to each other to sketch the same scene, and each one will have a different style and interpretation. Even those who haven’t been drawing that long might have seen and focused on something that you missed. One thing that I sadly notice often, is people being overly critical of their own sketches. I hear things like, “Oh, I’m just a beginner” or “This isn’t really good”. Neither of these statements are helpful in any sense, neither for the person who did the sketch nor for anyone looking at it and seeing what they can learn from it.

Critiquing ones own work on the other hand can be helpful. This sounds more like: “I like what I did in this corner, I want to try to do that again next time.” “I need to put some work into my composition skills.” Or, “I think I want to try to push the contrast up even more next time.”

However, these are all things that you only think about after you have made your sketch. The thing that will have a much bigger influence on your sketch is what you think about it before you even start with it.

Before you start with a new sketch, you need to ask yourself what the goal of this sketch is. Be honest with yourself. Then decide whether you are happy with that goal, and change it if you want to. Why do this?

• It puts less pressure on you to make the perfect sketch every time.

• You will know by what measures you should judge your sketch afterwards.

• It can help with deciding which materials to use for the sketch.

• It helps you to decide how much time you want to spend on that sketch.

• It can help you to pick a focus point and composition for the sketch.

The range of goals you can set for yourself is vast, from “I just want to relax” to capturing the moment or practising a specific skill. If your goal at the outset is to “make the perfect sketch”, you are probably setting yourself up for failure.

Some more ideas for goals:

• Playing around with a specific colour pallet.

• Capturing the reflections in the water.

• Trying out new art supplies.

• Capturing a specific element in the landscape that has caught your eye i.e. the sky, a specific building, the people.

• Capturing the mood of the scene.

• Sketching my coffee before it get’s cold.

• See how much I can sketch in 5 minutes.

• Use the sketch to ground myself in the moment.

• I want to apply the composition techniques I recently learned.

The variety of goals that you can set for yourself are endless. Here are some of my sketches with the goals that I wanted to reach with them:

For this sketch my goals were to stay as loose as possible while still being able to read the scene and play with the negative space around the building in the background.

For this sketch I wanted to use a specific Delft Blauw colour palet I had chosen the previous day, while capturing the same scene that Vermeer did years ago.

I made this sketch one Saturday morning in the quiet lobby of a local movie theatre. I wanted to use the sketch to just relax at the end of a busy week and enjoy the process of making it. So I happily lost myself in the variety of lines while sipping a coffee.

I am not particularly fond of drawing typical dutch row houses. The scene can get flat so fast. So for this sketch my goal was to lean into that flatness on purpose, while setting myself a time limit of 15 minutes to do it in.

What if halfway through your sketch something happens that completely throws you off and it becomes impossible to reach your goal? These things happen. I have a friend who’s pot of ink spilled all over her sketch when the wind decided to be extra mean. A seagull can decide to poop on you. This happened to me once when I was cycling, but it could just as well have happened while I was sketching. It can start raining halfway through your sketch, like it did in this sketch of mine. I have heard of so many people who have had a pen fall into a body of water while they were sketching on a bridge or dock. These things happen, and it is ok. You are allowed to change your goal. Maybe your new goal can be “making the best of this situation” or seeing what a sketch will look like if I finish it with a different pen.

I was sitting on a jetty while making this sketch. Halfway through the sketch my favourite blue pencil at that time fell through the wooden boards, right into the river. I was planning on drawing the building with said blue watercolour pencil, but had to change to a normal black pencil.

Since there is such a big variety of goals that you can set for yourself, I am curious - what are some of the goals that you have set for yourself, or are thinking of setting for a future sketch? Let’s continue the goal brainstorm in the comments.

Thank you for reading Sketch. Explore. Create! If you would like to show support for my work you can buy me a pencil and/or subscribe to this newsletter.

May you flow over with creative ideas!

Nino