Artist Spotlight: Nancy Cook – A Sense of Scale

Scale is a basic principle of design and composition. It always relates to the size of the work of art in comparison to the size of us as human beings. Taking something tiny and often overlooked and spending the time necessary to draw it in great detail gives an artist a deep appreciation for the beauty of the form. I’m constantly telling my students that sketching is more about seeing than anything else. 

How do you convey that sense of beauty to your viewer – the wonder and awe of the complexity of nature? One way is to create your work of art on a scale much, much larger than the object you are rendering. Nancy Cook takes a seed, a leaf, a branch – and blows it up larger than life with beautiful details in her textile work. She gives us an easy window into the understanding of nature’s beauty.

I was very fortunate to see an exhibit of Nancy Cook’s work at the North Carolina Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill this week. (Unfortunately it comes down next Tuesday the 28th.) It’s worth seeing – and then wandering the beautiful landscape – sketchbook in hand.

So as you sketch, as you observe, keep in mind a sense of scale. Might your sketch be a study for a final work of art? What scale would you like to work with? What will your final product be?