Drawing

Words & Photography
by Chloe Scheffe





I started drawing when I was very young, and am now beginning my last semester at Rhode Island School of Design. Because I’m a graphic design major, drawing isn’t necessarily essential to my work, but I love it so much that I’ve been trying to incorporate more drawn elements into my pieces, and I use my sketchbook for drawing as often as I do for concepting. I am trying to get in the habit of drawing daily, doing gestural sketches that are far less developed than the ones you see here.

People are easily my favorite subject—their micro expressions and gestures, posture, and clothing—but I’ve also been playing with patterns and abstraction.

People are easily my favorite subject—their micro expressions and gestures, posture, and clothing—but I’ve also been playing with patterns and abstraction. I often search street style blogs for reference photographs, because they serve equally well for both kinds of subject matter. I’m hugely inspired by the palettes of fashion images, as they are often either very inclusive or very limited, as well as images of nature, actual walks around the city, books, and the work of illustrators I admire. I feel the urge to draw most when I’m tired of computer work—having something tactile to come back to is essential.





A year ago I started drawing with ballpoint pen on a whim, and I use it almost exclusively now (the cheaper the pen the better), along with ink washes, which I started over the summer in an effort to bring some looseness and change to my work. Sometimes I put the paint down first and then do a drawing on top of it, or, to help me resist the urge to make a perfect finished drawing, I quickly layer until the page feels done (a technique I learned in an oil painting class, which is very much the opposite of the approach for a design project). I am trying to develop a style that has both fine detail and coarse texture—flatness and depth—that reads as a unified whole, not just two layers artfully smashed together.

I am trying to develop a style that has both fine detail and coarse texture—flatness and depth—that reads as a unified whole, not just two layers artfully smashed together.

In addition to my future graphic design practice (whatever that may be), I’d like to work as an illustrator, particularly in editorial illustration. The idea behind a piece, or the story driving it, is just as important to me as the way it’s drawn, and I love that design and illustration are so alike in that crucial way.