Jonathan JP Barth

Not too suprisingly, I was introduced to drawing through sibling rivalry.  My older brother would reproduce sports cards or magazine covers and I started to do the same trying to seek his approval. At some point along the way that stopped in terms of drawing and art, and became skateboarding. Around that same time I grew a deep appreciation with animation and cartoons. Which, is no surprise really given that I was only five or six years old but, the exposure to both skateboarding culture (also as an activity) and animated characters fired a signal off in my brain where the rest unfolding into the now. 

I remember all the break throughs and "level-ups" and what they felt like. All the frustration that builds of attempt-after-attempt-after-attempt. Then when you nail it, you burn it in, you wire it into your brain and you never forget it. 

Just like skateboarding. 

Just like everything else. 

Having an education in architecture I lived with a sketchbook in hand. But long before that I walked around with a sketchbook drawing characters and graffiti pieces. For the most part, the majority of my work is with graphite  and hours of grinding down lead and burning through technical pencils. There is a freedom that can be found in sketching that isn't there in graphic illustrations. Painting has a form of this freedom but to generate detail there's a pause. Now that pause can be good or bad but it's still a pause, where much of the freedom I'm refering to comes from never structuring most of these sketches. Most of it was context and representation.

Sketching is fluid. 

Sketching also allows for the perception of the creator to change as marks are being laid into a blank space. 

I had an instructor say it before, "draw where the light is not..." The form, and therefore context, is generated by shadow and shade. 

Another great aspect of sketching is there's no need to erase. There's nothing in this practice tha requires perfection. For an individual who is obsessed with perfection, like myself, it's very relieving. Whether it's designing furniture, a building, a graphic, or even fashion, It always starts with a scratch. 

And that scratch can be writing.

And writing can be drawing. 

Because the act of writing is.

So live in a sketchbook.