Ethnographic practice seeks to understand the anthropology of people and things. We can delve deeper through drawing to find a sense of people’s environments and even the landscape in where they live and work. This sense of people in a community space is probably the reason urban sketching is becoming so popular. It’s a field practice which has nothing to do with exhibiting or selling art, but is part of an anthropological study.
I’ve been drawing as a means of knowing and understanding the world since I was first able to hold a crayon. I filled my school notebooks with sketches of teachers and fellow students within the space we shared. I’ve discovered sketching for research teams to be a natural transition.
An Ethnographic Artist either becomes a member of a research team, or is a researcher doing a study who sketches. Drawing during or after fieldwork provides the opportunity to preserve the memory of moments with people, and of places, situations, circumstances at distinct periods, in conditions and positions in which one finds themselves. It opens the research field’s horizon to reveal its hidden qualities.
Message me to discuss adding me to your research team!
To take a quick dive into the methods of Ethnographic Drawing, and how it can be an integral part of research, check this out, from Curtis Newbold, the Visual Communication Guy: