On the Drawing Board : * Sylmar’s Century Gallery is displaying five artists’ initial sketches alongside their finished works. ‘Sketchy Beginnings’ offers the public a rare insight into inspiration.

In an art gallery, we are usually treated solely to the finished work of an artist. Yet, regardless of the medium, an artist’s completed image has often evolved from the merest of sketches.

At Century Gallery in Sylmar, viewers can see five artists’ fully realized works, accompanied by their initial sketches and other inspirations.

“When I go to artists’ studios, this is what they always show me. They always have things taped and thumbtacked up--what inspired them,” said gallery director Lee Musgrave. “I’ve always wanted to show that material. Most artists are hesitant to show it. They don’t want people to know. The material is increasingly valuable to scholars and museums.”

The exhibit, called “Sketchy Beginnings,” provides some insight into the varied stages artists go through. Some sketches serve only as a point of departure for the final work. In others, one can see all of the nuance and detail; the sketches stand as accomplished works of art in and of themselves.

Richard Shelton’s very large triptych, “Good Doggie,” in oil and encaustic on canvas, begins with a pencil-on-paper drawing of the central painting, “Composition Study.” In a biting commentary on the corporate structure and its minions, the main image is of a corporate soldier walking into headquarters. A rather mangy dog is passing by. In the left panel is a dead cockroach on its back. The right one contains symbols of money and greed.

Between the pencil study and the finished triptych, Shelton also did a small oil-on-canvas “Dog Study,” which depicts only the dog; an oil-on-canvas “Architectural Study” of the building in the central image without man or dog; and a small “Oil Study” of the triptych. All of these studies are on view.

The mixed-media sketch on paper for “Landscape of Dishonor” by Frank Gutierrez conveys a good sense of the finished work’s composition, but not of the bodies that ooze out of an open pipeline in a virtual sea of oil. The fully realized figures and the drama of the final work are not evident in the first, streamlined version.

Eleanore Rembaum’s photographs of architectural elements capture aspects of the complex urban environment that fascinate her. Here, her pictures form a mixed-media “Study” for abstract, geometric monoprints such as “Spatial Concepts” and “Spatial Design Panes.”

Pictures in newspapers and magazines are the catalyst for Richard Beck’s abstract, surrealistic oil paintings. “Landscape With White Eruption” is rooted in a newspaper photo of an F-4 Phantom jet slamming into a wall at 480 m.p.h. “Southwestern Landscape with Crater” developed from images of a bomb crater and a tanker explosion.

Richard Valdes’ studies consist of simple blue ink on notebook paper drawings. His oil on canvas, “Singing, Some Say Somewhere Someday,” depicts two women joyously strumming guitars in an appealing outdoor environment. One wears a peace symbol around her neck. Both have angels’ wings.

Valdes states: “I picture such a place. Where friendly songs can be heard so high up in the mountains, the last place where man hasn’t built or paved a parking lot. Like summer breezes, and easy lazy days that we all remember.”

One could never see that vision in Valdes’ sketch. That sketch, and the photographic images that have inspired these artists, “have no identifiable texture or quality,” Musgrave said. But the completed works have a quality specific to the artist. For Musgrave, it is a pleasure to present insight into the process of how artists take images around us and make them their own.

WHERE AND WHEN

What: “Sketchy Beginnings.”

Location: Century Gallery, 13000 Sayre St., Sylmar.

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Ends April 8.

Call: (818) 362-3220.