“We see only the finished product; a sketchbook sees the process.”
An individual’s sketchbook is usually a deeply personal tool used to work out the things that swim around one’s brain until they form concrete ideas. They are used by everyone from artists to scientists to children and anyone in between with anything to jot down. Typically, we see only the finished product. A sketchbook sees the process: arguably the most interesting part of anything that happens.
A few years ago I went to a Picasso exhibit at the Reina Sofia in Madrid. It filled an enormously long hallway-like room, which opened up at the very end to Guernica. While the gigantic painting was of course breathtaking, it was the sketchbook drawings and relevant written articles throughout the exhibit that really got me. You can spend years looking at pictures of Guernica and other hulking masterpieces, and not stop to look at and think about the process.
In The Make, a project that visits the studios of West Coast artists, is all about the process. And so are we. After many, many studio visits and artist interviews, In The Make got even more up close and personal by featuring a private glance inside artist notebooks and sketchbooks. Check out the sketchbook round-up via ITM, and slow down for a minute. It’s not all about the end product.
Creating the Haunted Man
Anna Ådén
