Discovering Your World Through Sketchbooks: Meet Shari Blaukopf
Artist Shari Blaukopf (Ep.52) sat at the front of her design students one day early in her teaching career. She had put painting aside years ago in order to focus on her career as a designer and college instructor and to raise her two sons.
But here she saw her students frustrated and she began to realize something.
“When I studied graphic design, I sketched out my ideas,” says Blaukopf of a time before everyone had personal computers, Photoshop and Illustrator. “We all drew our ideas on paper. So our ideas went from our head to the sketchpad.”
She looked at her students and suddenly understood, “They didn't know how to sketch. They didn't know how to draw out any ideas.”
This inability to sketch meant that they were frustrated. They looked at their computers thinking that ideas would come from there.
But Blaukopf knew better. She knew they’d come from working in the tactile world, solving and thinking through ideas on paper. From sketching.
“I said, we’ve got to get them sketching.”
PICKING UP A PENCIL
After leaving art for decades, Blaukopf found herself picking up a pencil again.
She had all her students get sketchbooks but she realized she could best lead by example.
She decided to make a public commitment: She’d commit to sketch 10 minutes every day and share those efforts on a blog.
She hoped showing up each day would both encourage her students to do the same and to also show them it wasn’t about perfection or creating something beautiful.
“It didn't really matter what they drew,” says Blaukopf. “They could draw on the bus or draw each other or just doodle or draw from imagination or whatever.”
The important part was to begin getting their hands moving and through that, their minds.
URBAN SKETCHING
Having a sketchbook on her person wasn’t a new idea. When Blaukopf was young and taking painting classes with adults, she constantly had a sketchbook on her.
But its use was clear: To plan a painting.
So as she began her daily sketching habit, that’s still primarily what she thought it was for. A private thing (even if shared publicly) for ideas.
Until one night, Blaukopf decided she wanted to see what other artists were doing with their sketchbooks. She was blogging and she knew others were as well.
What she stumbled across would change her life: The Urban Sketcher’s blog.
“It was so exciting to see what I saw online that I couldn't sleep that night,” says Blaukopf.
What she saw amazed her. These weren’t static paintings of pretty things. This was LIFE. She saw artists capturing the world around them in ways she didn’t even know was possible.
One of the first sketchbooks she saw, an artist in Jakarta had captured the ritual slaughter of a goat. Blaukopf had never seen anything like it expressed through a sketchbook.
“So it wasn't just like a landscape sketch…you're sketching people who are moving, you're telling a story. It was so thrilling, so exciting.”
She was hooked.
“I started looking at other people's work, and they were sketching in markets. And it was the storytelling aspect that was so exciting for me.”
PAINTING FROM LIFE
Even though Blaukopf had painted extensively earlier in her life, the transition to urban sketching wasn’t without bumps. She went through all the same fears she now sees her students work through.
Painting in public creates a kind of vulnerability that studio painting does not. Blaukopf tells of her first time out in public, sketching in her car.
“I was so worried that somebody would see me and call the police because I was loitering on the street,” she says.
She also knows that being in public offers fears of being judged. Part of urban sketching is being in the environment… and sometimes that means the environment talks back
It’s one of the things Blaukopf loves about it but she knows it can be a bit of a shock for first timers.
“That's why Urban Skechers is also a great organization because there's regional chapters and city chapters so people go out with others,” says Blaukopt. “ And when you're with somebody else and you're both doing the same thing, or there's three of you, or four of you or six of you doing the same thing, then you feel comfortable, because you're not the only one.”
MATERIALS
Today, Blaukopf is an advocate of both studio and urban sketching. And while there is some overlap, the processes differ primarily in her materials.
“It's very important to not bring everything and I was always guilty of that of bringing too many things. And now I really pare it down.”
It took a few tries before Blaukopf got her urban sketching kit down.
She started with a 3x5 sketchbook that she could carry in her pocket.
“I still carry one in my bag all the time, because you never know where you are, if you're waiting for the garage, or the dentist or whatever.”
Next she makes sure she has a pencil, a pitt pen (it doesn’t smudge with water) and her small palette and a water brush.
“If you have it in your pocket, then there's no excuse. If you have five minutes, you can always draw.”
EXPERIENCE OVER PERFECTION
Blaukopf loves to travel. And even before she traveled for teaching, she connected with the idea that urban sketchers showed their world. And as a viewer of urban sketching, you can experience other places and other experiences through an artist’s sketchbook.
Sometimes that’s the inside of someone’s home looking out onto the street. Sometimes that’s the middle of a protest (Blaukopf sketched in the middle of when her school went on strike) or like above, a ritual slaughter of a goat.
And for Blaukopf, it isn’t about perfection. When she first got started, she’d worry someone would ask to see her books and so she taped the ugly pages together.
Today she gladly shows the whole thing.
“You put in the bad drawing and then put in [a good] drawing ...and if you show somebody the good drawing, the bad drawing, the okay drawing. All together. It's just part of the process. Good and bad.”
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