Sketchbooks in Italy
with Ken O'Connell
Ken O’Connell is an artist and Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of Oregon. Sketching with Ken is an adventure in seeing the world with fresh eyes. You will learn to work portably, quickly, and with an eye towards capturing fragments of wonderful experiences. The sketchbook is your portable studio and your portable history. The spirit of the rough sketch is to see simply and to learn to draw and color that vision. You learn to see by sketching, and fragments become dream catchers for whole experiences.
Artists throughout history have used sketchbooks to make notes and work out drawing problems for their work in other media.
Today we bring the combined benefits of sketchbooks with journals, notebooks, scrapbooks, and practice a regular use of the sketchbook so it becomes a companion and partner in our basic connection to experience. Japanese research scientists have shown the stress reduction and anti-aging quality of sketching and coloring. More of the brain’s circulation is used during these activities: a simple sketch involves you using your eyes to send messages to your brain that then sends messages to your muscles and then back to your eyes and then back to your brain. It forms a learning loop that develops the mind and the person’s confidence throughout the process.
