A temptation when working on a drawing is apply equal attention and effort to every area of the page. However, my experience, certainly at the level of sketching, is that stronger results are often much less homogenised.

The image above was another Sunday morning sketch at church. It was done largely ‘blind’ with a little finishing work on shading and details but I think it would be much weaker if the level of detail on the right was replicated on the left. Taking the lack of detail from the left over to the opposite side would be better but I think where I took this one, with contrast, is best of all.

You can see that this is one of my ‘double spread’ series so another experiment you can carry out is to just look at one of the halves. To my eye, the right hand side is the focus of the overall piece but uninspiring when isolated. The left side is much looser and, critically, has a hint of the same focus on detail in the lower right that plays out across the whole.

Why does that work? Perhaps it is as simple as leaving something for the viewer’s imagination, an invitation to engage rather than just to view and move on.