Freehand Sketching Author: Paul Laseau | Language: English | ISBN:
039373112X | Format: PDF
Freehand Sketching Description
Even in the computer age, freehand sketching is the designer’s most useful tool for notation, design exploration, and graphic communication.
From basic skills to sketch construction using grids, frames, and shapes to the creation of tone, texture, color, and detail, and experimentation with digital rendering, Freehand Sketching helps you build your drawing skill and confidence through mastery of fundamentals. Carefully designed exercises guide you step by step in effective sketching in the studio and in the field. Also covered are helpful topics such as useful equipment, observation skills, framing and editing sketches, rendering people, and keeping a journal.
An array of the author’s lively sketches as well as examples from other architectural professionals fill the pages of Freehand Sketching, making this an ideal handbook for architecture and design students and all who wish to be more effective at visual communication.
- Paperback: 112 pages
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (January 17, 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 039373112X
- ISBN-13: 978-0393731125
- Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 9 x 0.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
This is one of the best how-to books out there for artists of any and all stripes. It teaches how to pay attention to things and draw recognizable renderings of the things around you. Once you start to really see things, drawing them becomes easy - the trick is to pay close attention to details you often take for granted or miss entirely.
After a couple days of work I was able to draw houses, trees, furniture, jewelry, appliances, and a myriad of other things before I was done with chapter one. Nothing I rendered looked fantastic but I could show my drawings to anyone and they could immediately tell what they were. But the real benefit wasn't the end results, but the process of observation. I'd say what I learned most from this book is that 80-90% of any "field drawing" (or drawing what you see, on the fly) is observation and the other 10-20% is putting ink on paper.
The only real problem I have with this book is its implicit structure, and I had to read the whole book before I started using it just so I could record the lessons in the order they were presented. This was important to me because I planned to do every exercise, in order, as the author intended.
Here are the lessons in the book, in the order they are presented in:
Contour drawing
Negative space
Proportion and scale
Stroke consistency
Construction, tone, and detail exercise
Grid exercises 1 and 2
Frame exercises 1 and 2
Shape exercises 1 and 2
Tone
Texture
Color
Shadow
Volume
Detail and Pattern
Fieldwork
The order makes sense, the lessons are valuable, and the exercises are challenging and fruitful.
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