Sketch Series: Ana Maria Nater

The American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Profile Template_ANA MARIA

Ana Maria Nater spends her evenings doing rapidfire sketches using salvaged materials - chopsticks and ink, a discarded newspaper clipping - as part of a drawing class. We asked Ana Maria, a designer in our New York studio, what inspired her to start drawing again and how taking pen to paper has made her a better designer.Tell us about your drawings.These are some sketches I’ve done so far in a class I am currently taking at Parsons School of Design. Right now, we are just doing very rapid sketches of objects - literally in seconds - as we need to learn how to abstract what we are seeing (chair, stool, umbrella, etc.). We are also learning how to use different drawing tools. For example, some of my sketches were drawn using chopsticks and ink in whatever material I could find laying around the room. We've recently started to sketch some interior spaces (Metropolitan Museum and Chelsea Market), and then we will start to learn how to render them.I am taking this class because I’ve always been a big fan of free-hand drawings and after seeing the Valencia Texican Court sketches [by Maksim Koloskov], something sparked inside me and motivated me to take a class! I think that sketching is such a useful tool for designers to communicate their ideas. Even a scribble can become a great design later on.How did you first get into sketching/drawing?I’d say ever since I was in elementary school, I've enjoyed painting and drawing. Every summer as a child, I was enrolled in the art camp that the Museo de Arte de Ponce (in Puerto Rico) offered. I have a travel sketchbook that I sketch in from time to time, but I have to admit haven’t used it in a while. I used to take it everywhere I traveled and tried to sketch something that caught my eye in every place I went.What do you sketch when you’re not at work? I really like going to public spaces to sketch, whether they are of interior spaces or exterior ones. I enjoy sketching buildings because I think that even if the building does not physically change, the light, the people, and the weather make for a different experience each time, which I try to capture in the drawing.What was the last thing that inspired you?Art Basel Miami 2016.What are your favorite tools?I like to sketch with Pigma MICRON pens and when I have the time and space, I like to get a little creative and just use a chopstick and black ink. I really like for the lines not to be perfect, and the chopstick/ink combination gives you different line weights with just a stroke.When do you find the time?I haven’t lately, which is why I enrolled again in a night class to try to force myself into doing something I like and truly enjoy. I hope that after this class it becomes a habit.