Before mobile devices with cameras — and software applications that capture images and store and share them — there was the sketchbook. A hard case, cloth-cover book featuring at least a hundred blank archival pages was always within reach. As a young art student it was my practice to draw advertisement layouts, images, typographic arrangements, or other sources of inspiration that I might use in future creative projects. Occasionally a sketch was a hand-drawn duplication of a photo, print ad, or poster. More often it was an interpretation, re-imagining, or riff on an original source of inspiration. It was, and is, how I learn — how I study. It is tactile.
The practice of drawing develops the interaction of muscle and neural growth. Drawing is a skill that will not improve by machine learning or multimodal image creation software applications. It is a dance between the muscles of the hands and fingers in coordination with the eyes and the cerebral cortex. Outsourcing these skills only lead to atrophy of intellect and muscle. Looking at my hands as they hover over the keyboard, I wonder why I am not drawing instead of typing. This too is a dance. The delicate steps navigating life’s dance among digital and analog tasks.
Coffeehouse Junkie 