Peggy Dean - Mindful Sketching

Its a true honor to have my friend Peggy Dean invite me to write this foreword. Peggy is a refreshingly real and much needed voice in the resurgence of on-location sketching across the globe, and its power to transform how we see and thus how we experience the world around us. The line she draws linking sketching to mindfulness (a term Peggy rightly replaces early on in this book with awareness) is at the heart of that transformation.

Though Ive been drawing since preschool days, it was on-location sketching as a student of landscape architecture at Louisiana State University that first opened my eyes to drawing as more than doodling from memory or imagination. Indeed, sketching a place on location became a doorway to awareness, as it demands that we observe our subjects more closely. In doing so, we see them more clearly, and experience them more deeply.

This heightened awareness gives us fresh eyes with which to see the world. We become more aware of the particular natural features and characteristic vegetation of a place. We examine and sketch our interpretations of building materials, surface textures, patterns, light, and shadow. In turn, our senses become heightened to smells and sounds around us. We become more attuned to behaviorwhy people are frequenting a particular corner of a plaza, how they sit, how they cluster, what they are eating and drinking. Over time we gain insight into what makes some places lively magnets for activity while others are oases of quietude.

This doorway to awareness changes everything. Sketching becomes a way to be still, to go deep, and to begin to open a playful conversation between place, pen, and personality. The rewards are insights into an underlying spirit of place, whether the immediate subject is a landscape, a town, a group of nuns strolling down the sidewalk, or some memorable street food.

Peggy brings experience and empathy to this creative path. In this volume she shares hard won lessons regarding a range of sketching techniques that can save one many hours (even years) of frustratingly slow progress through trial and error. These lessons are necessary and valuable, but they are secondary to the wisdom she offers regarding foundational attitudes. Peggy has a gift for making people comfortable with their own experience and skill level, and with the idea of imperfectionthat our sketches are not intended to be finished works of art so much as our own authentic reaction to what we are seeing. Rather than an end in itself, each sketch is seen as part of a continuum of documenting life experiences and learning along the way. Youll also find that its a pleasurable form of meditationa discipline that requires you be fully in the present moment.

We often hear that its more about the path than the destination. Whats not said as often is that the experience of the path can be much richer and more rewarding if youre traveling with someone whos been there beforesomeone who speaks the language, who knows where some of the potholes are, who can offer shortcuts when appropriate, and who is always there with an empathetic ear and an encouraging word. Peggy is a light on the path, a road-worthy guide. Enjoy your journey.

JAMES RICHARDS