Fieldnotes in Sham Shui Po (Hong Kong) by Wenrui Li. From the website Illustrating Anthropology.
Although fieldnotes typically consist of written notes, anthropologists often include sketches and drawings in their fieldwork notebooks. These sketches can range from simple shapes and stick figures to artistically complex naturalist-realist paintings (Bray, 2015).
Using drawings and sketches as a field method offers many advantages. Perhaps most importantly, it encourages researchers to pay closer attention to what they see. In other words, if as field researchers, our work is to observe, drawing can be seen as a “path to the goal—to see—not the other way around” (Causey, 2017, 11). Drawing can therefore help researchers more fully observe their surroundings.
Methodologically, drawings and sketches provide an additional means of documenting what researchers observe in the field. They do not replace written field notes but offer a different medium of documentation that can accomplish purposes that writing alone cannot. At times, researchers may even feel compelled to stop written note-taking and do some drawings, when they feel, as Taussig (2011, 16) describes, “the more you write in your notebook, the more you get this sinking feeling that the reality depicted recedes, that the writing is actually pushing reality off the page.” Drawings, on the other hand, grasp at the things “beyond text”, they don’t need to be reasoned over or framed analytically. They draw on distinct faculties and ways of feeling and seeing that prefigure understandings or analysis of something.
There are several ways in which field researchers can use sketches to document their experiences. For example:
- Sketches and drawings can be used to document material culture, such as tools, clothing, and architecture. Anthropologists can create detailed drawings of these objects, noting their size, shape, and unique features. This can help provide a visual record of the objects and aid in their analysis and interpretation. Drawing requires us to take notice of things beyond their utilitarian or representable value. This close attention enlivens more of the connections between form and use. Drawing also strengthens visual memory, even if the drawing is not faithful or true to the thing, the act of drawing helps the drawer remember features they otherwise might not.
- Anthropologists can also use sketches and drawings to record social interactions between individuals or groups. For example, they might create a diagram of the seating arrangement during a meeting or draw a map of the physical space where an event took place. As well as other entities or structures implicated in the interaction. This can help capture the spatial and relational dynamics of social interactions. Recording these intricacies through drawing may also allow us to notice particular dynamics retrospectively. It is difficult to remember visual, auditory, physical features, and some may not seem relevant until after the fact.
- Anthropologists can use sketches and drawings to capture their sensory experiences in the field. For example, they might draw a landscape or a building to convey the visual impression it made on them. This can help convey the richness and complexity of the sensory experiences that shape social life as sounds, feelings, temperature, and smells can precipitate subconsciously into drawings.
- Sketches and drawings can also be used as a tool for communicating with research participants. This method, aptly titled by Ballard (2013) “drawing-as-dialogue” lets anthropologists create a drawing to help clarify a concept or idea (for an example of using ” sketching-mediated encounters with artists” focusing on Tiguan painting, see: (Colloredo-Mansfeld 2011)), or use visual aids to facilitate communication across language barriers. This can help build rapport and mutual understanding between researchers and participants.
Work Cited
- Ballard, Chris. 2013. “The Return of the Past: On Drawing and Dialogic History.” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology. 14 (2): 136-148.
- Bray, Zoe. 2015. “Anthropology with a Paintbrush: Naturalist–Realist Painting as ‘Thick Description’.” Visual Anthropology Review 31 (2): 119-133.
- Causey, Andrew. 2012. “Drawing Files: Artwork in the Field.” Critical Arts 26 (2): 162-174.
- Causey, Andrew. 2017. Drawn to See: Drawing as an Ethnographic Method. North York, ON: University of Toronto Press.
- Colloredo-Mansfeld, Rudi. 2011. “Space, Line and Story in the Invention of an Andean Aesthetic.” Journal of Material Culture 16 (1): 3–23.
- Taussig, Michael. 2011. I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.