Image: “Drawing” by Becky Stern, via flickr, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
At a glance…
Often treated as peripheral, drawing and sketching offer unique advantages for observation, documentation, analysis, and representation. They sharpen attention, preserve sensory and spatial detail, and can foster dialogue with research participants. Unlike dominant modes of ethnographic photography practices, sketches often foreground the researcher’s perspective and interpretive labor, making them valuable tools for methodological reflection and ethical engagement. Situating drawing within the broader landscape of multimodal ethnographic methods reveals its capacity to enrich fieldwork and expand the possibilities of ethnographic knowledge production.
Learning objectives
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
Explain the role of drawing and sketching within multimodal ethnographic research, including their methodological and representational functions.
Analyze how sketching can enhance observational attention, memory, and reflexivity in ethnographic fieldwork.
Evaluate the use of drawing as a communicative and dialogic tool in participant engagement, particularly across linguistic or cultural boundaries.
Discuss ethical considerations in using ethnographic drawings, including issues of anonymity, abstraction, and representation.
2.1. Introduction: The importance of a marginal practice
During his fieldwork in Indonesia, anthropologist-artist Andrew Causey took up drawing and painting insects as a form of leisure (Causey 2012). While initially a personal diversion, this practice unexpectedly enriched his ethnographic inquiry. His sketches prompted conversations with his landlord and carving teacher; and in turn, those conversations revealed cultural insights that became central to his research. Although at first, drawing appeared to be a random hobby that could detract from his research, it proved to be central to his field experience. Reflecting on this experience, Causey noted that “the act of drawing impacted several avenues of my ethnographic investigation in North Sumatra” (2012, 172).
Although Causey initially framed his drawing as a hobby, his experience illustrates a broader pattern: drawing and sketching are often treated as peripheral to ethnographic research. Standard field methods rely heavily on textual documentation, and as Hendrickson observes, drawing is “rarely discussed in books on anthropology field methods” (2008, 119). Even within visual anthropology—where photography and film are dominant representational modes—hand-drawn sketches tend to be overlooked. Yet, as Causey’s case shows, drawing can serve as a generative ethnographic technique, offering alternative ways of seeing, documenting, and engaging with the field.
Incorporating drawing into ethnographic practice supports interpretation, facilitates dialogue, and foregrounds the sensorial and processual dimensions of fieldwork. Sketches can render aspects of the field immediate and palpable to the reader, while serving as cognitive anchors for the researcher—preserving fleeting impressions, spatial arrangements, and affective resonances. In this way, drawing becomes not merely a mode of recording, but a technique for thinking, interpreting, and representing.
Beyond their documentary function, ethnographic sketches invite reflexivity by making visible the interpretive labor of fieldwork. Unlike photographs, which are often typically perceived as capturing reality with mechanical accuracy, drawings necessarily and more explicitly reflect the researcher’s perspective—what is included, what is omitted, and how elements are rendered. This process highlights the partiality and positionality inherent in all ethnographic accounts. The slowness and attentiveness that drawing demands also attune the researcher to visual, material, and emotional dimensions that might otherwise remain unnoticed. Therefore, incorporating drawings and sketches into the research process can provide invaluable insights into social realities and their representation. By engaging in this seemingly marginal practice, researchers can potentially uncover new avenues of inquiry and deepen their understanding of what they study. Reflection over the process of interpretation may enrich ethnographic accounts, bring more of the process to view, and provide more transparency of the many media that final accounts emerge from. Sketches drawn in the midst of fieldwork also lend a sense of immediacy and presence to the reader. For the writer, they can work to anchor memories, reflections, and impressions of an event, enabling them to revisit it later. In this sense, they serve as a technique for thinking with.
Drawing also complicates conventional boundaries between data collection, analysis, and representation. As a practice that occurs both in the moment and in reflection, it can serve simultaneously as fieldnote, analytical tool, and expressive form. Sketches may surface new questions, disrupt narrative assumptions, or expose tensions between what is seen, felt, and written. This layered temporality positions drawing as a mode of inquiry in its own right—capable of illuminating experiential and relational complexities that purely textual accounts may not.
In this sense, ethnographic drawing aligns with broader multimodal and experimental approaches that aim to expand the epistemic possibilities of anthropology. Attending to drawing not simply as illustration but as a serious methodological practice enables researchers to both deepen their ethnographic insight and contribute to ongoing conversations about the forms and media through which anthropological knowledge is produced.
Although fieldnotes are typically text-based, anthropologists have long incorporated sketches and drawings into their notebooks. These visual entries may range from rudimentary shapes and stick figures to detailed, artistically complex naturalist renderings (Bray 2015). Far from peripheral, such visual practices can offer distinct epistemological and methodological advantages.
First, drawing sharpens observational attention. If ethnographic work begins with the imperative to observe, then drawing can be understood as a technique that disciplines and deepens that observation. As Causey (2017, 11) writes, drawing is a “path to the goal—to see—not the other way around.” The act of drawing slows down perception, compelling the researcher to notice spatial, material, and relational details that might otherwise be overlooked.
Second, sketches function as an alternative medium of documentation. They do not replace written fieldnotes, but complement them, offering access to forms of expression that resist or exceed textual description. As Taussig (2011, 16) notes, there are moments in the field when “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.” In contrast, drawing can evoke dimensions of reality—tactile, affective, or fleeting—that writing may struggle to capture. Visual forms thus serve as a mode of thinking that prefigures interpretation, tapping into faculties of attention and intuition distinct from those activated through prose.
Ethnographers can use sketches in a variety of ways, including:
Documenting material culture: Sketches and drawings can be used to document material culture, such as tools, clothing, and architecture. Ethnographers 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.
Recording social and mapping spatial arrangements: Ethnographers 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.
Capturing sensory impressions: Ethnographers 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. Although primarily visual, these drawings may carry traces of non-visual sensory input (sound, temperature, smell) through the quality of line, shading, or composition, thus offering an oblique record of the multisensory character of the field. 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.
Facilitating dialogue with participants: 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.
Throughout fieldwork, ethnographers gather and interpret data through a range of formats—written notes, audiovisual recordings, diagrams, and sketches. While these materials capture the immediacy and complexity of experience, they are often reworked into more linear and text-dominant forms of representation, such as monographs and articles. As Geismar (2014, 97) observes, this process has traditionally marginalized visual components, relegating drawing to the status of informal supplement rather than serious mode of scholarly communication.
Yet sketches and drawings can offer distinctive representational affordances. Their capacity to combine observation, memory, and interpretation makes them valuable not only during data collection but also in the presentation of findings. Visual representation enables researchers to depict material and spatial relationships, convey affective or sensory dimensions, and integrate multiple perspectives within a single frame—qualities that are difficult to achieve through text alone.
This is especially evident in archaeological contexts, where illustrations have long played a role in documenting and communicating research. Drawings can depict artifacts, architectural features, or site layouts with attention to both detail and context. They are particularly effective for visualizing spatial relations—such as the positioning of objects within a burial site or the relationship between built structures and natural features. Beyond descriptive accuracy, illustrations can synthesize different temporal layers, viewpoints, and interpretive insights, offering what Simons (n.d.) describes as a way to combine different visual styles, moments in time, landscapes, and ideas into one image.
Importantly, illustrations also allow for selective abstraction. In sensitive contexts—such as mortuary or sacred sites—drawings can communicate method and insight without disclosing confidential or culturally restricted information. By remixing and de-identifying visual data, they strike a balance between transparency and ethical responsibility.
While drawings used in final outputs should be grounded in careful observation and methodological integrity, they need not conform to a narrowly realist or technical aesthetic. Their strength lies precisely in their ability to convey complexity through form—foregrounding the researcher’s interpretive stance and inviting the reader to engage with the fieldwork not only cognitively, but visually and emotionally.
Watch someone work in a video online (playing a video game, cooking, painting walls, fishing, coding, etc.). Do a drawing or sketch about a specific aspects of the work. As you interact with the video and your drawing, reflect on the practice: How does the fact that you are taking visual notes of the activity influence your watching of the work? How does your sketching guide your understanding of the following quote (Hendrickson 2008, 129):
Producing visual along with verbal field notes […] has allowed me a different sort of active engagement in the worlds of people and places ‘‘out there’’ as well as ideas ‘‘in my head’’; the two are brought together–shown to be inseparable–as marks on the page trigger thoughts, which in turn push me to draw and look and converse and think more and in different ways.
Ethnographic drawings v. photos
In what ways do you think fieldwork notebook drawings are different from ethnographic photos? In other words, if the purpose is to visually represent what we observe in the field, why should we draw sketches and not take photos instead? What advantages field sketches offer that photos can’t offer? How does the following excerpt from Taussig (2011, 21) may guide our view on advantages of drawing over photos when taking fieldnotes
Photography is a taking, the drawing a making, and although there is much to quibble about with these words, there is wisdom in them too. John Berger certainly thinks so, with his enigmatic notion that a photograph stops time, while a drawing encompasses it?
Ethics of ethnographic sketching
What do you think about ethics of research involving drawings and sketches? What ethical considerations do field researcher need to considered when creating sketches and drawings as part of the process of knowledge production? Can field sketches and ethnographic drawings help with ethical issues related to confidentiality and anonymity?
This is a drawing by Megan Nguyen, a student in the undergraduate course Principles of Fieldwork (ANTH407 – 2022W1). The drawing was created for an assignment in which students were asked to watch a video of someone performing a task and sketch an aspect of how the work is carried out.
How a UBC researcher used illustrations to represent urban Indigenous identities
I aim to challenge dominate Indigenous representation that situates natives as of a specific hair and skin colour, and rural existence. This is often done through including a variety of hair styles and colours, skin colour, and aesthetic and environment details. Thus, through all my art and its distinctive elements, I aim to contribute to the expansion and diversifying of contemporary Indigenous representation in public worlds.
In her research with Dunne-Za Cree communities, UBC Anthropology graduate student Cheyanne Brown Armstrong (n. Connell) explores the role of traditional language in contemporary identity-making and performances through a feminist Indigenous perspective. Armstrong engages multiple registers to build her ethnographic account of identity-making, from online platforms, aspects of self-presentation, and the history and social life of language. She then expresses her work through both writing and illustrations. This multimodal approach develops an expansive and layered sense of everyday diverse urban Indigenous identities in settler states that accounts for the complexities therein. Through illustrations, Armstrong increases the accessibility to aspects of her work, as images draw in and resonate with a wider audience. This also shifts the purpose of her research; rather than working to document and catalog ethnographic information, this technique helps engage an ongoing dialogue and expression of culture. Drawing inspiration from traditional plains Cree art, Armstrong works to incorporate these influences and blend them with her own style. This effort responds to the need for a more public anthropology that works to address social issues beyond the discipline or academic discourse. Accessibility is a central concern in Armstrong’s work and reflects her commitment to advancing more open exchanges of ideas and increasing cooperative engagement, as well as her dedication to the community with whom she works. This kind of accessible and active engagement is particularly valuable in the case of communities that have historically been documented, cataloged, and dispossessed; continually being denied adequate space for self-expression. This work goes beyond charting a critical diagnosis and also reclaims an active form of agency. Armstrong shares her conviction that “having feeling in ethnographic research is really important” and stresses “the importance of striving for rich ethnographies and rich narratives of people’s experiences and stories”. In this sense, her work reflects a future-oriented anthropology that demonstrates a commitment to carving out and reinventing new spaces and radical forms of becoming. Armstrong’s work challenges the idea that Indigenous identities are contingent on externally imposed nostalgic ideas of what might be considered ‘traditional’, and instead works to represent and imagine more dynamic articulations of identity that embrace differing notions of self woven into people’s lived experiences. Armstrong highlights that writing and illustrating complement one another; adding context through writing and tacit depth through illustrations that are able to capture people’s experiences and sentiments in unique ways. This kind of multimodal engagement in anthropology pushes for creativity within the parameters of academic work.
Discussion question
How does Cheyanne Brown Armstrong’s multimodal approach to anthropology, integrating writing and illustrations, contribute to a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of urban Indigenous identities and their expression? How does her emphasis on accessibility and active engagement challenge traditional notions of academic research and facilitate broader social dialogue and cultural representation?
Taussig, Michael. 2011. I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Structured around a series of sketches and drawings that Taussig made during his fieldwork in Colombia, the book is a reflection on the use of drawings and fieldwork notebooks in anthropological research. Each drawing serves as a starting point for a larger discussion about the nature of ethnographic research and the role of the researcher in the field. Throughout the book, Taussig reflects on the ways in which his own drawings and fieldwork notebooks have shaped his understanding of his research, and he offers insights into the creative and interpretive process of ethnographic research. Ultimately, “I Swear I Saw This” is a meditation on the complex and multifaceted nature of fieldwork, and an exploration of the possibilities and limitations of ethnographic representation.
Abstract: The fieldwork sketches of Arthur Bernard Deacon, made in Vanuatu in 1926–27, give us insight into the early methodologies of social anthropology and into the role of images in anthropological ways of thinking. Here I develop a perspective on field sketches that explores them not only as visual mediations of the fieldworker’s subjectivity, but also as genre pieces that indicate very particular forms of training in “how to see.” I draw out the visual conventions, ways of thinking and seeing, that underscore the different strategies that Deacon used in his drawing.
Causey, Andrew. 2017. Drawn to See: Drawing as an Ethnographic Method. North York, ON: University of Toronto Press.
The book explores the potential of drawing as a tool for ethnographic research. Causey explains how drawing can enhance our ability to see and understand the world around us, and that it can help us to generate new insights and understandings of cultural practices and social relations. Causey’s book also provides practical advice on how to incorporate drawing into ethnographic research. The book is a valuable resource for anthropologists and other researchers interested in exploring new methods of documentation and analysis. The book also includes 39 accessible drawing exercises (titled ‘ETUDE’) . The author’s goal is that anyone can try these exercises regardless of their drawing skills.
Colloredo-Mansfeld, Rudi. 2011. “Space, Line and Story in the Invention of an Andean Aesthetic.” Journal of Material Culture16 (1): 3–23.
Abstract: This article examines Tiguan painting and the conventions of this new native Andean visual art, its representation of space, and the way it portrays traditional and contemporary material culture. Engaging the problem of alternative modes of spatial perception, the author describes how the act of drawing can become a tool of ethnographic exploration. With insights gained through sketching-mediated encounters with artists, the article shows the relevance to Tiguan art of Ingold’s recent arguments about lines as an organic device of narrative and visual ordering. Where formal spatial perspective offers a vocabulary of hierarchical order — foreground, background, vantage point — lines invoke movement, duration and interchange, which become recurrent issues for Tiguan artists.
There are several sketching accounts on Instagram where you can find inspiration for your practice of drawing and sketching. One example is Albert Kiefer’s architectural sketches.
