The Art of Sketching

The AJ’s Sketchbook series is a showcase of sketches and concept drawings by architects and designers. Today’s sketches are by Kevin Cooper, a director of NORR in Glasgow and a Fellow of the RIAS.

I love sketching but I do worry that it may be a bit of a dying art nowadays. It’s a low-tech activity in a high-tech world, although it does remain a very powerful tool.

I have wonderful younger colleagues who can produce wonderful digital imagery. However, in my experience, clients still get excited if you can just sit down and draw in front of them. There remains, thankfully, a kind of magic in that.

All projects start with an idea, and the kernel of that idea can sometimes be found in the very first sketch.

I love the blank page. I love the intuitive exploration that follows the absorption of all those client discussions.

You never know whether the evolution of the idea is going to be quick or slow, easy or difficult; but that’s the joy of the creative process, isn’t it?

Sketching allows us to explore, and, ultimately, to discover. I find the idea’s analogue journey from the mind to the hand and from pen to paper to be tremendously exciting even after 30 years of doing it.

It really is an essential part of the joy of being an architect. I never tire of it.