Once a week, I do art with a few artist moms from my daughter’s old school. We all work on different projects most of the time, but recently we occasionally started hiring a model–Dana. She’s been great—she comes up with imaginative and interesting poses, doesn’t get restless or impatient. It’s been a valuable and humbling experience—I was surprised and chagrined to find out how much of a challenge it was (as were my friends)! If a gesture drawing is a sort of visual equivalent of a sit-up, boy was I in sorry shape. Yes, I could draw our model with relative accuracy, and knowledge and technique started to come back as I got into the swing of things, but it required discipline and concentration I wasn’t used to. Odd, since I draw people all the time for most of my illustration jobs, and can put in long days when I need to. I’ve heard any number of illustrators complain about no longer keeping a sketchbook–and I’ve been one of them. I’ve been getting illustration work, and my style isn’t particularly realistic, and I guess I’d been thinking I get more than enough drawing practice.

Nope. Drawing Dana has made me understand what got lost when I started letting the sketchbook gather dust.

I started doing art in the first place because I couldn’t stop doodling when I was a kid—paper, cardboard, schoolwork, the occasional dresser. In some of my art school classes, we had to keep a sketchbook, and my drawing and observation skills improved with all the life-drawing I did. There was discipline—and joy. But my sketchbook became more than a place to draw things I saw. It became a repository of words, pictures and ideas. I could be serious, playful, ridiculous. My sketchbook was a place to explore, create and develop my identity—my voice as an artist.

I make art when I do illustration, but that doesn’t make me an artist true to myself—I need the discipline—and joy of a sketchbook for that.