Sketching is like dancing. It's process as much as product. You can turn your head off and just sort of dissolve into the now. Doing a giant, super thought-out painting is the opposite of that.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Sketching is almost everything. It is the painter's identity, his style, his conviction, and then color is just a gift to the drawing.
Mostly, drawings are things I make for myself - I do them in sketchbooks. They are mental experiments - private inner thoughts when I'm not sure what will come out.
Sketching in general - anywhere, not just in Gitmo, but in life, in the world - is a profoundly disruptive act. Because you're creating something when you're kind of expected to consume or sit passively. I've always sketched things as a way to get into them, whether it was a fancy nightclub or, you know, to have kids think I was cool, whatever.
You can't do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh.
Lose your inhibitions about drawing and just do it.
Drawing is the only thing I've found in which I can lose myself completely. I love it. It started as something that relaxed me, but now it's a struggle because I'm pushing myself. The day-to-day sketching is fraught.
I find that I'm constantly drawing. Even when I'm on holidays or when the baby's sleeping, I'll just start doing some automatic drawing, something like that, and then it will turn into a piece, even though I thought I was just doodling.
I don't work from drawings. I don't make sketches and drawings and color sketches into a final painting.
My technique of working is I go around with my iPhone and with my sketchbook. I take thousands and thousands and thousands of iPhone photos. I also draw from life. I can draw really, really, really fast. It's a way that I build a rapport with people.
The truth is, I don't sketch much at all. I have a very visual/spatial brain that retains a lot of information about maps, directions, positioning, and details, so I usually prefer working out those issues on the page itself.