This literally foregrounds not only my role in creating the field, frame, and fieldnote, but also my participation in that which is observed. My approach is influenced by both the work of Lynda Barry (2014) and the urban sketcher phenomenon, that has an explicit manifesto with which I align as an ethnographic sketcher:

1.     We draw on location, indoors or out, capturing what we see from direct observation.

2.     Our drawings tell the story of our surroundings, the places we live and where we travel.

3.     Our drawings are a record of time and place.

4.     We are ‘truthful’ to the scenes we witness (Quotation marks are mine).

5.     We use any kind of media and cherish our individual styles.

6.     We support each other and draw together.

7.     We share our drawings online.

8.     We show the world, one drawing at a time.

 

(Urban Sketchers, no date)

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My work is also influenced by the work of Taussig (2011), an anthropologist who has for some years embraced the use of his own illustrations as a way of enriching his work. The graphic novel as a narrative form has also been a source of inspiration, particularly the work of Marjane Satrapi (2003), Alan Moore (1988), and the explicitly non-fiction anthropological work of Sopranzetti, Fabbri and Natalucci (2021), themselves inspired by Satrapi and Moore among others (Sopranzetti, Fabbri and Natalucci, 2018). The graphic novel concept offers a unique dual storytelling medium, through the considered and blended combination of visual and verbal elements. Inspired by this, I include notes of speech and paralinguistic features in my sketches, enabling a form of “thick description” (Geertz, 1988). I believe that the ethnographic sketch is valuable both in terms of the research material that is recorded and the process itself. Sketches as fieldnotes / outputs allow participant gesture and body language to be recorded and presented in a form which (perhaps?) more closely resembles what was observed. They may also mitigate ethical issues around lack of anonymity that can result from the use of photography. Furthermore, the process itself demands a deep and prolonged immersion into that which is observed. The time taken to create a drawing, and the demands that sketching places upon the ethnographer to consider spatial relationships, posture, and expressions, require an unusual degree of close observation. As Barry (2014: 99) states, the drawing is “a side effect of something else, a certain state of mind that comes about when we gaze with open attention.” This, I believe, aligns powerfully with notions of the ethnographic gaze (Madden, 2017), making the process of ethnographic sketching as, if not more, valuable than the output.