Sketch class:

I go to Prof Xu’s Studio for sketch class every week if I’m not too busy with school. This is not only a sketch class, sometimes I felt like it’s a philosophy class. I guess everything can be relate to philosophy. Prof Xu was who mentioned Giacometti to me the first. My sketch book always looked messy, and he said: “It’s a little bit like Giacometti.” I started to know Giacometti because Guggenheim’s exhibition. I went to Guggenheim 3 times to see his artworks. But the time I went with Laura was the time I had deeper understanding about his artworks, maybe because we inspired each other from his sculptures.

Prof Xu told me it’s more important to discover what you want from an object, instead of making the sketch look exactly “like” the object. Like Giacometti’s painting, it’s nothing like the original object or person, but he showed us what he want to show us. He was making what the object looked like in his mind. He was exploring something he wanted through the object he was painting.

Detail isn’t the most important thing for a sketch, it’s more important to express what you want through your work.