Some Unfinished Quick Sketches

One of my professors always pointed out that there's a vitality and life in quick sketches that you don't find in finished art. Based on that, he always cautioned against working too hard on a piece. He observed that, very often the best work of the old masters was not their well-known paintings, but sketches they made as preliminary studies for those paintings. 'Labor' can stifle freshness and spontaneity. Oriental brush work is a good example of the vitality and life of quick 'sketching'.

While my sketches above ranging from around 30 (top-most sample) to 10 minute sketches may be a little more than quick, at least their unfinished. ;^).. As you can see above, a feature of faster sketching for me is more visible cross hatching. In my longer pencil sketches (here), I usually use a shading stroke in which the distance between each stroke (or each 'hatch') is so slight that the resulting shading looks smooth, hopefully like airbrush shading. Some of that smooth shading is seen in the top-most sketch above.