Chunky Marks and Thin Water
Why oh why don’t I care for sketching??? She’d written it with three question marks, obviously frustrated! She grabs her paints in every spare moment, she said. Oodles of colored pencils, graphite in every hardness, and still she can’t make herself enjoy plain pencil work. A struggle bus she can’t seem to conquer. Underneath the post, a photo of an 11x14 charcoal sketch, done with one of those giant Derwent blocks. Maybe, she wrote, she just loves big chunky marks instead of details.
I read it and thought, I know exactly what you mean. Then I typed a reply saying the opposite thing had happened to me — I like sketching fine, it’s painting that gives me trouble — and hit send.
I thought about this for awhile and was inspired to write this post about it. I felt like I’d met a kindred spirit, but talking about different mediums.
Except that it’s not that ”I don’t care for painting.” It’s just not my go-to art medium.
Mine isn’t dislike. When I sit down with watercolor I already know what I’m chasing — I’ve seen it in other people’s work for years. The way pigment goes translucent in the water - or not. That satisfying bloom that happens between 2 colors when the wetness between them is just right. I know what that looks like before I ever load a brush, because I’ve been looking at it since college, since high school, longer than I’ve actually been trying to make it myself. So when my version falls short — when the transparency comes out flat instead of alive, or the color doesn’t do what I could already see it doing — I feel it as a gap, not as something I’d rather not do. There’s a name for this, actually. Someone once called it simply “the gap” — the space between the taste that got you into a craft in the first place and the hand that hasn’t caught up to it yet. Sometimes it takes years for those two things to meet. Most people quit somewhere inside that gap. The ones who don’t aren’t necessarily more talented. They just keep closing the distance, one ruined sheet of paper at a time, on the belief that the distance is closable.
I trust mine is closable because I’ve closed it before. Whatever ability I had in painting in college wasn’t a fluke — it came from the same place the drawing did in high school, and if it showed up once, I don’t see why it can’t show up again. Especially now, with the time and freedom to actually chase it, instead of fitting it in around everything else.
And there’s this too — I never seem to stay content inside one medium for long. Give me a year of nothing but sketching and I’ll start eyeing the watercolor paints again anyway. It’s less discipline than restlessness. I want the tool that does the thing I can’t yet do, not the one I’ve already made peace with.
There’s a difference in payoff, too, between my two mediums. Sketching is fast. Paper, a pencil, five minutes, and I already know whether it worked. The gap between attempt and judgment closes almost instantly — I get to feel competent on an ordinary afternoon, over and over, small hit after small hit. Painting doesn’t hand me that. I sit for an hour, sometimes longer, before I get any read on whether it’s working at all. Same mechanism as sketching. Just a much longer fuse before it pays off or doesn’t.
This artist never said pencil work was hard for her. She said she couldn’t make herself enjoy it, and pointed to that charcoal block as the closest she’d come to liking a sketch. The more I thought about that, the less it looked like a skill gap and the more it looked like a mismatch — pencil work asks for something small and careful, and it’s possible her instinct runs the other direction, toward something bigger and less deliberate. That’s just a guess from the outside, but it’s the shape her post suggested to me.
Which made my own reply look different in hindsight. I hadn’t misdescribed anything when I said painting gives me trouble, but “trouble” was covering for something more specific than I’d let myself see. Watercolor is the medium I haven’t earned yet. I can see exactly what I want from it, because I’ve been looking at other people’s work since college, since high school, and my hand still isn’t where my eye already is. That’s the actual thing. Not a dislike. Just distance I haven’t closed.
Her post didn’t hand me an answer. It handed me a clearer question — one I’m still sitting with every time I load a brush and the water doesn’t do what I already know it’s capable of.
Each week I like to include reflective thoughts and activities based on my article. I hope you enjoy making these part of your weekly routine.
💬 Something to Ponder
I’ve been sitting with the difference between disliking something and just not having caught up to it yet. From the outside they can look identical — the frustration, the abandoned attempts, the sense of not-quite. But one closes with time, and the other doesn’t, no matter how much time you give it.
✍️ Journal Prompt
Is there something you keep returning to, not because you’re good at it yet, but because you already know exactly what it’s supposed to look like? What is it?
🌼 Breathe + Be
Notice the last color you saw before you opened this email. Not the memory of it — the actual one, still somewhere in the room with you.
This week has been really focused on finding a new website host before my current expires next month. As I go through my photo and art collection, I realize I have a lot of material for some online galleries and finding an easy place to host that without breaking the bank through feature bloat I don’t need has been challenging. But - I think I’ve found one and should be relaunching it soon!
In between the research and site building, I have found some time to sketch, walk and take photos. I’ve learned the bottle of ink I revisited for work isn’t waterproof, so tried a sketch where I did the inking after a pencil sketch and painting. I can see doing this anyway for some accents, but ordered some permanent ink to start sketching right in ink and painting over it. It’s a style I’ve always loved and want to get better at.
I hope you enjoy my little cactus scene from my morning photo walks!
