I travelled to the Harvard Fogg Art Museum to glance at the famous artist sketchbooks. They were on display at a small exhibition in the Straus Gallery of the museum. The collection contained skecthbooks from hundreds of years ago to ones from the last century. They varied from type of paper and quality.

Sargent used his skecthbooks for studies. He used these studies to create his final pieces. The two sketches from Henry Moore seemed like complete pictures to me; with full color and line. Some artists did caricatures within their sketchbooks. Thomas Rowlands depicted people's faces as different fish heads. There was a sketchbook from David Smith a sculpture for you could tell by the shapes and movement of his lines.

Many of these artist used their sketchbooks to simply do basic sketches with simple lines and simple mediums such as ink, pencil, and carcoal. The subjects in these skethes included animals, structures, and people. The sketches were of studies, completed works as well as just a startig point for the artist.

This exhibition shows that even though these artists were famous and dead that we still follow the same steps in creating art. We start with sketches that we collect as we carry our sketchbooks through new places and old. Our sketchbooks consist of the same range of artwork as they did hundreds of years ago.