Gallery Sketching for Art Appreciation

If you aren’t already a sketcher, you may feel hesitant to sketch in a gallery or museum. You may feel shy about sketching in public and worried that other visitors will judge your drawing negatively. You may also feel that you have no idea how to start or what to sketch!

Don’t worry so much! After your first little doodle, you will discover that sketching is an easy, fun, and rewarding experience!

Sketching in museums and galleries is an old educational tradition and most museums welcome the public to take notes about and sketch their collections. What I’m saying is that, far from being weird, sketching is a widely accepted and encouraged form of learning.

Sketching pottery in an archeological exhibit will connect you to the person who formed it eons ago. Observing and drawing animals in a natural history exhibit will increase your wonder of the diversity of our planet. Likewise, sketching art is one of the best ways to enhance your appreciation and understanding of art in general as well as getting to know an individual piece.

Art museums can be bewildering! There is so much to look at that most of the time we work our way through galleries quickly, stopping at a few pieces that catch our attention more than the rest and, unfortunately, leave as bewildered as we arrived. Even when we stop at a piece, we don’t spend very much time with it. We’ll read the information card beside the work which identifies the artist, the materials the piece was created from, and connects the piece to history. This is a great first step toward getting to know a work of art. There are, however, many more wonderful treasures hidden within every piece of art than an information card can supply. Some of the keys to unlocking those treasures are time, observation, questioning, and curiosity.

You will find that taking the extra time to observe a work of art will increase your appreciation significantly. As you view a work of art carefully enough to sketch it, even if it is just a doodle, you will notice that the work will begin to divulge some of its secrets. Sketching will also make you ask more questions, and if you are curious enough to seek the answers to those questions, your appreciation of the piece will grow exponentially!