SKETCHING IN 2020: WHY SKETCH? BY T.K. JUSTIN NG, USK VANCOUVER
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quick backstory: I recently published my second book, ‘The Vancouver Sketchbook’. Rather than just sharing drawings, I spent months researching the city to tie together the evolution of the city’s urbanism and its pictorial identity. In the process, several unexpected and somewhat tangential themes surfaced. While my first manuscript of the book included pages dedicated to these topics, most of them were omitted in order to keep the book’s content succinct and appealing to a broad audience. I have recently begun to piece these ideas back together to share with you. So why did I start on-location sketching? The desire to represent and communicate to others the world around us is human nature. Before we are able to write or speak clearly, drawing was the only accessible form of representing our surroundings. While I have been drawing since kindergarten, it was only in 2013, at age 17, that I picked up a copy of Gabriel Campanario’s ‘The Art of Urban Sketching’ and began to set aside time each week for on-location sketching. That was the year I took a deep-dive and plunged into the world of art and design. Instead of kicking a ball or picking up a guitar, I chose to sit in the intimidating gaze of the public and draw what I saw. When people asked me why I prefer sketching over other extra-curricular activities, I would bring up one of three reasons. Firstly, in the process of recreating what lay before my eyes on paper, I become intimately acquainted with my subject, forcing me to observe,
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