Sketches for First piece

In terms of amount of information, I don't sketch well... I have always found that I do my best work the first serious time around. In other words, if I work too hard and do too much detail in the sketching phase of a piece, I can't duplicate my original from my sketchbook onto the final piece; and I always like the sketch better than the final. And so, I always manage to do as little as possible in the sketch phase and work 95% of the time on the final piece. All of my detail come to life on the final surface, and I always feel better that way.

Now The Boston Codex is a little different. I am starting to get more detailed in my sketches than I would normally do. But I have an explanation for this. When I am working on the Codex I am working on over twenty other pieces that have already been created and finalized. So I sketch because I am terrified. I am terrified that if I screwup on the new drawings in the Codex, I will have to sacrifice completed drawings for qualities sake. And it happens. I had to remove one portrait because I hated the way it came out. The figure didn't fit in the frame properly and I had to cut it out of the Codex. Now if I had had a drawing on the back of that portrait I would have been screwed, because it too would have had to go bye-bye.

In conclusion, I have decided sketches are worth my time and I am finding them useful in ways I hadn't before. They are still very minimal, and most of my work still goes in the final piece, but I am learning to trust my early stages more.