The Urban Sketcher, Marc Taro Holmes - Book Review

I thought it was about time I read up on urban sketching.  Even if I'd not been given those markers for Christmas, I was planning on heading out at some point to do some sketching with a roller ball and painting in with watercolour later.   So I followed the recommendation of the great Teoh Yi Chie of Parka Blogs and started with this book.  It's a 144 page paperback but, with the last 14 pages devoted to a personal gallery with no commentary against the sketches, it feels more like one of those 128 pagers.

The book is divided into three chapters which, at first sight, are all about sketching with pencil, pen & ink and watercolour.  But this is just to lull the reader off guard as this is really a course on urban sketching that applies to any medium (including markers).  There are plenty of demos and exercises there too.  The demos are important as there are a couple of three-step processes that Marc describes that benefit from worked examples.  Let's go through the three chapters individually.

First there's the chapter on pencil.  The main content in this chapter is on sighting/measuring/angling, use of shadows and composition.  All of this is relevant to whatever medium you are using, not just to pencil.  The stuff on leading the eye through a composition is, unlike that in so many other books, well explained.

The second chapter is on pen and ink.  It starts by describing a "three pass" approach to sketching.  The first step is a pencil drawing, the second the ink outlining and the third the spot blacks to add shadow and interest.  Then the rest of the chapter has some really good advice on sketching people.  It covers separately people sitting still, people moving around but repetitively (eg musicians who keep returning to the same poses) and people walking in the street who are only in your sight for a few seconds.  Again, this is all relevant to other mediums.  There's very little on perspective in this chapter, which was a surprise.  I don't mind that as I got an A at O Level in Engineering Drawing but others might need more help, in which case Parka Blogs recommend a book by Paul Heaston.  There's also one by Stephanie Bower in the Urban Sketching Handbook Series the that will be less detailed.

Finally there's the chapter on watercolours.  It describes techniques like charging washes, spattering, dry brushing and edge pulling (which is like Jean Haines lite).  It describes another three step approach, the tea-milk-honey approach.  You start with a pale watery underpainting, then a layer of thicker paint on top, then finally a layer of really thick paint.  I thought it was interesting that Marc, unlike Joseph Stoddard in his book, doesn’t like to ink over lines before adding watercolour.  I veer more towards Joe here but we'll see.  This chapter is more medium-specific than the others but I don't mind that as I do fancy doing some watercolour urban sketching.

I liked this book.  The drawing side seems a step further on than Betty Edwards and it brings together elements from Bert Dodson and all my watercolour books and turns them into something new and fresh by applying them to urban sketching.  It's a good introduction to urban sketching but feels a little bit light on content.  There's also not that much inspirational looking artwork in there.  Still, it was definitely worth the money and gets a comfortable three palettes.

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Winsor & Newton Promarkers

These beasts were waiting for me on Christmas morning.  They're all Winsor & Newton Promarkers with a chisel head at one end and a pointy one at the other.  There's the 12 marker "Set 1" at the back, which came with the blender pen at the front thrown in.  And there's a set of six flesh tones and one of six neutral tones at the front (because I'm an artist, not a connoisseur of colouring books).  And a really cool Winsor & Newton carrying case.  There are two duplicated colours (black and one of the greys) but that's not a problem.

I'm looking forward to giving them a go, with some day trips out to draw buildings or, if it's too cold, to draw people from the comfort of a coffee shop.  I've ordered an A5 Strathmore Bristol smooth pad and some A4 Winsor & Newton bleedproof marker paper.  I'll experiment with both but I've already seen the W&N paper and it's really thin like printer paper so I suspect that the Strathmore pad may end up as the long term solution,

Nathan

This is the result of one of the exercises in Keys To Drawing by Bert Dodson.  It's a portrait of one of my kids in the style of Henri Matisse.  I need to do more drawings like this.

Keys To Drawing, Bert Dodson - Book Review

I've made it to the end of Bert's book at last.  At 224 pages long, it's huge.

The first five chapters were fantastic.  They're on contour drawing, "artistic handwriting", proportions, light & shade and depth.  There are then a couple of chapters on texture and composition that didn't especially rock my boat (and, to be honest, I've not yet found a treatise on composition that really chimes for me).  And finally there's a chapter on creativity that feels like it doesn't really belong here and that reminds me of the bit at the end of some novels where they treat you to the first chapter of the author's next book.

There are loads of exercises throughout the book, along with interesting checklists that you can look through afterwards to evaluate your drawing (Did you draw blindfold in places?  Did you talk to yourself while drawing?).  I originally went into this book planning to do every single exercise (which I did for the Betty Edwards Book) but there were just too many of them and many of them required live models) so I didn't follow through with this plan and, after a while, ended up just reading the book.

Look, why don't I stop beating around the bush and just compare and contrast this to the Betty Edwards book?  OK.  Let's do it.  I'm glad I read Betty's book first.  I thought her book was a better starting point for someone with no confidence in their drawing.  It felt more like a study course than a book because there were few enough exercises to keep me on board and because there was a strong sense that the exercises were building up to a final big project that was the self portrait.  Bert, on the either hand, freely admits that his chapters can be read in any order, so it feels less like a course.  On the other hand, Bert seems to go into more detail and I will keep coming back to his book, whereas I doubt I'll ever reread Betty's.

My recommendation is that everybody buys both books but goes through Betty's book first, doing every exercise.  Bert's book then provides extra detail and is something to keep on the shelf to consult in future.  Bert is a book; Betty is an experience.  Both score five palettes.

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Summer 2019 Poll Results

Here are the results of the latest poll.  Hidden Village came out equal top.  Otherwise no big surprises really.

People are still welcome to vote at https://poll.app.do/summer-2019-painting-poll