Draw the exciting elements of your world with confidence using the tips, techniques, and ideas in The Complete Urban Sketching Companion. Packed with information and visual inspiration on sketching architecture, cityscapes, people, and motion, plus lessons on perspective and adding color, this collection will have you filling sketchbook after sketchbook with compelling artwork.
The popularity of the urban sketching movement has grown worldwide, and it's easy to see why. Sketching on the go is exciting, rewarding, and creatively satisfying. With so many choices of what to sketch and how to sketch it, you need a companion to offer valuable insights, enlightening tips, and tons of ideas and inspiration. The Complete Urban Sketching Companion is that helpful guide to take along on your next overseas adventure, or to your favourite cafe around the corner.
This book includes key drawing techniques and strategies from four books in the Urban Sketching Handbook series: Understanding Perspective, Working with Color, Architecture and Cityscapes, and People and Motion. Learn how to draw unique buildings, urban landscapes, and lively street scenes, incorporating interesting elements and striking colour and lighting. Get tips on sketching with accurate perspective with easy methods and great examples to guide you along. Discover ways to capture motion, whether it's a group of dancers or commuters on the move. Become confident in adding colour to artwork by learning about different mediums and colour mixing techniques.
In The Complete Urban Sketching Companion you'll also find:
Simple tools and materials to get started
Ways to build a well-composed scene
Techniques for drawing urban environments to scale
How to construct a sketch in layers
Tips for rendering different types of perspective
Strategies for creating dramatic shadows
How to include a range of color values to create depth
Ideas for interpreting movement and gesture
Methods for drawing individuals and crowds
Get started on your urban sketching adventures today, and start capturing life.
Author Biography:
Shari Blaukopf is a sketcher, watercoloir painter, college teacher, and art blogger. A signature member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, she has works in corporate, government, and private collections around the world. Co-founder of Urban Sketchers Montreal, Shari gives workshops throughout Europe and North America, and has taught at Urban Sketchers Symposia as well as through the Urban Sketchers Workshop Program. Shari grew up and still lives in Montreal, where she continues to discover new neighbourhoods in her quest to find the most evocative streets and back alleys to sketch. Her online courses can be found at Craftsy.com, and you can follow her sketches at shariblaukopf.com, blaukopfwatercolours.com, and on Instagram @sharisketcher.
Stephanie Bower worked as a licensed Architect in New York City before gravitating to professional architectural illustration and concept design. She taught the how-tos of architectural location sketching for over twenty-five years in New York City at Parsons and in Seattle at the University of Washington and Cornish College of the Arts. She has two online sketching classes at Bluprint.com, and she travels and teaches perspective and watercolour workshops internationally, including at six Urban Sketchers symposiums. People around the world follow her sketches online via Instagram @stephanieabower and Facebook, and she is an international blog correspondent for Urban Sketchers. Stephanie is a signature member of the Northwest Watercolor Society. She is the author of The Urban Sketching Handbook: Understanding Perspective (Quarry Books, 2016), The Urban Sketching Handbook: 101 Sketching Tips (Quarry Books, 2019), and co-author of The Urban Sketching Art Pack (Quarry Books, 2017).
Gabriel Campanario is a staff artist at The Seattle Times and the founder of Urban Sketchers (urbansketchers.org), a nonprofit organisation dedicated to fostering the art of on-location drawing. Campanario's newspaper column, Seattle Sketcher, was awarded first place for blog writing in "The Best of the West" journalism contest. The blog and weekly print column, which combine location sketches and written stories, have quickly become popular in the Seattle area, where Campanario has been featured in TV and radio appearances. A native Spaniard, Campanario moved to the US in 1998 and has lived near Seattle with his wife and two children since 2006. His journalism career spans two decades, working for newspapers in Barcelona, Lisbon, California, and Virginia. Campanario has a masters degree in journalism from the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain.
