Sketching is an essential part of my painting process. I always do an initial sketch before starting a painting, but that is not the only reason why it is important. I also do a lot of live sketching.
A couple of years ago, I bought an A5 sketchbook and started filling it with small sketches: landscapes, animals, plants, buildings... I've now got four sketchbooks full of these little drawings. They're done very quickly, are often messy and rough, but I love doing them and I love looking back at those I've done months or even years ago: keeping a sketchbook is rather like keeping a diary except that words are replaced by images. When I look back at my older sketches, I remember what caught my eye at that specific moment, an emotion, a feeling, a mood.
The leaves of Quercus rubra
Sketching from life is also a wonderfil exercise for training your eye. It forces you to look at your subject, to notice small details, to concentrate on what makes it unique. When you sketch leaves and plants, you begin to pay attention to their intricate structures and realise how beautiful they actually are.
Dried leaves and twigs of a lime tree in winter
Drawing animals from life is more difficult because they hardly ever stand still. Yet I found that it was a great exercise to practise getting their anatomy and their movement right. Moreover, because you have to draw quickly, you tend to select only what is essential: a movement, a posture, a look. Sketching is capturing a fleeting moment in time.
A Dartmoor Hill filly
I take my sketchbook with me when I'm walking on the moor, in the countryside, in a garden. Doing this forces me to stay on the lookout for inspiration, and also to take my time as I enjoy the nature around me.
Sketching is also great for practising drawing skills, such as getting shapes and shading right. Sometimes, I also use my sketches as references for some of my paintings. This was the case with my "Rowan Tree" paintings (which you can see here): I had made several sketches of the twisted trunk of this tree and they helped me to get it right in the paintings. It was also sketching this tree that inspired to do a painting of it in the first place.
