Sketchbook_Confidential
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When sketching, I am completely immersed. I feel honored to be in nature, to give myself up to the process. The eye and hand are totally on their own. I don't think while drawing; I look and make the line. Drawing is a form of meditation, one that can last for more than an hour. I lost myself so completely on one occasion that when I rose slowly after an hour and a half on a sketch, two deer bolted from ten feet behind me, apparently looking over my shoulder.
My paintings are composites of drawings and, therefore, necessary to my work. For me the drawing is the crucial, exacting document. It is a portrait. My paintings are composed of these portraits. I see the compositions as a dialogue among the portraits. Creative license comes in the assembly of drawings. The painting is the free-for-all.
Taylor Fragment 1
Oil/earth pigments/acrylic/paper/canvas (finished painting) 32" × 24" (81cm × 61cm) Collection of the artist
Alberta Fragment 12
Pigment/acrylic/paper/canvas (finished painting) 32" × 24" (81cm × 61cm) Collection of the artist
Oro Fragments I, II
Oil/acrylic/canvas (finished diptych) 46" × 44" (117cm × 112cm) Collection of the artist
Chuck Sabatino
A collector of historic and prehistoric Southwest Pueblo pottery, Sabatino often arranges his pieces alongside Native American artifacts and rendered Edward S. Curtis photos for his oil paintings. After attending the Cartoonists and Illustrator School in New York (now the School of Visual Arts), he spent the next twenty-five years building an award-winning career creating ads for such companies as Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble. Upon retiring in 1988, the longtime New Yorker moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, and now spends his days painting. He has been
featured in SOUTHWEST ART, WESTERN ART COLLECTOR and ART OF THE WEST magazines.
Drawing is a way to learn more about the subjects you're working on. I do preliminary drawings for composition, space, value and lighting.
When I do find a unique artifact for a new painting, I start to do preliminary drawings of it with other artifacts to find the right composition, evaluating the use of negative space, value and lighting. Some of the things I think about when sketching are how objects relate to each other, color, texture, and getting a pleasing flow to the composition. At this point it's easy to move things around.
In my finished sketch there is enough information as to the size of the subjects, lighting, shading and notes written that it could be possible for someone without any knowledge of the original subjects to paint the painting.
I usually sketch at night, after I've painted all day. It's a way of relaxing and being