Fatti Maschi Parole Femmine

Sketches from my study abroad trip to Oxford last year.

Sketching is another artist habit that I’m very bad about keeping up to date. I wanted to fill up a sketch book full of beautiful doodles of European streets and vistas and museum relics, but alas…I couldn’t even decide whether to stick with a small sketchbook or a big one! And the incongruity of that bothered me so much. Even now, I hesitate at the thought of sketching because in my head I need to develop an organized “method” first, which sketchbook to use for what type of sketching, what pens to stick to, what I should be looking to sketch (large environmental stuff, or small details) what notes to take with it, etc. etc. In actual practice I become panicked at the realization that there’s not enough time to sketch everything, and the people I’m with probably hate me for being so slow. I’m also the type of person that worries about things being “ugly” in my sketchbook, which is why I strongly dislike people rifing casually rifing through my sketchbooks…I actually feel pretty violated by that sometimes, since a lot of my premature half-formed artistic ideas and just crappy mistakes are revealed there, and to me that is something I hold rather secret and personal, stuff that maybe I don’t want to be remembered for artistically, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a weirdo. Still, I definitely wish I had more time to sketch more things when I was in Oxford. I hope I’ll get another chance to go back sometime!