What To Do With a Sketch?

I have a ton of company right now and no time to paint for a few days.  So I sorted through some of my sketches and found these two...both en plein air, done in 2002 in England.  The reason they were out and about is that I am prepping for the sketching class in September and I want to spend some time talking in the class about WHAT DOES ONE DO with the sketches after they are done. 

 I have seen so many sketch book journal artists and moleskin sketchers

and a plethora of doodlers and nature sketchers, etc.  Sometime they talk about the downright pleasure that sketching gives them...or they talk about the way it "sharpens" the way they look at the world or they talk about how travel journals give them a remembrance that no other memento or photo can. Some talk about journaling as a way of self expression and even for healing. 

 There is also a whole other side to journals.  Some people actually publish their journals, make coffee table books from them, (or blog about them! :-)  Some artists use their sketches as initial inspiration for larger formal studio paintings. 

And in my classes I also talk about things like making notecards from your sketches, or using them for stationary (and even for envelopes) and just framing them as is.  These two travel sketches are matted and framed just as they are, en plein air on location on two beautiful memory-filled days.  One in Bibury at the old Swan Inn at the river where my sister and I stopped for picnic lunch one day.  The other an old tumble-down castle on the a high hill in Kendall, England, where I had to ask my brother in law to carry my sketch book backpack up the steep incline to the lovely setting of the castle on a high hill overlooking the village.  He fell asleep on the grass while I did this sketch while below us my sister and husband watched an old fashioned croquet game.  I never would have remembered all this any other way!