Sketching Creativity

One of the primary ways to enhance creativity is by sketching. This seems simple, too simple to work, but it is very effective. However it isn’t the sketching itself that enhances creativity, it’s the looking, the seeing. When you sketch you are forced to really look at things in more detail, to take note of them. In everyday life people don’t do this, they don’t recognize details in the world around them unless forced to. Sketching forces you to pay attention to details you otherwise would skip over visually.

But what if you can’t draw? Over the years many people have said to me that they didn’t understand art and design and they couldn’t draw. Yet they can draw, anyone can. Drawing is not very different from driving a car, they both rely on eye-hand coordination. Steering a car is much the same as pushing a pencil around on a piece of paper. I used to tell my students that once they learned how draw really well, they could draw using a pickup truck and a wheat field. And learning to draw really well just required practice like learning to drive a car. Like drawing and sketching driving requires a different form of seeing. We call it “paying attention” meaning paying attention to details. In driving the details are dynamic but this has less effect that one would think. Like creativity sketching and drawing would make one a more capable driver.

Anyone who wants to draw just has to practice it over and over. Put a vase of flowers on a table and draw it every day. Eventually you will be very good at it. You’re developing your eye-hand coordination. Your eye sees the vase and your mind sends information to the hand which puts lines on paper, then the eye provides feedback so you can compare the vase of flowers with your drawing of it. The feedback information goes to the hand continuing the process. For artists and designers this is a much easier process, they learn it much faster and with less work. This is mainly because they can already see in the necessary way, they don’t have to learn that. They also possess one other skill that the average person doesn’t have. If you take away the vase of flowers they can still draw it. This is because they can see it in their mind, they are able to visualize it.

This skill extends out allowing them to see and draw things that aren’t there. This is the key to their creativity. Instead of direct eye-hand drawing from a subject artists and designers use a mind-hand-eye drawing. The feedback from the eye compares the image already in the mind with the image they see and the mind sends the information to the hand. The ability to see like this is the creative part, not the drawing or sketching. The sculptor Richard Serra once said something to the effect that you climb a mountain because it’s there and you make a work of art because it isn’t there. And the way you enhance that creativity to to look for what isn’t there. Sketching helps by providing a record for contemplation, but sometimes just visualizing works better because one tends to visualize what isn’t there along with what is.