Urban Sketching: the complete guide to techniques

Urban Sketching: the complete guide to techniques by Thomas Thorspecken.

What a great artistic ambition, to sit in the world to draw and paint your surroundings.  

This ambitious book will help you do just that, and supply you with so much inspiration in the form a unique drawings and paintings.  

Practically every image in the book is hand drawn and painted, and interestingly the author starts the book off by helping you connect with other Urban Sketchers online.

The chapter on equipment and what to take is brilliant and the book goes on from there to teach you techniques that will help you progress from your table out into the world.  

Once you do pluck up what let's face it is a HUGE amount of courage to pack your bags and go into the world to paint, the author has you covered with location selection and advice on handling the pressure.  

For me my first venue was the local museum.  There I had thousands of items presented to me to draw and paint.  I figured that there is a tradition of drawing in museums and people kind of expect to see you there.  I wondered around in circles until i had the courage to pull out my book and pen and sketch a stuffed bird from various angles.  People kind of looked, I knew they were interested in what I was doing, but in Australia at least bypasses were discrete and just glanced at me and kept doing what they were doing.  It didnt take long until I was confident to walk around drawing.  That first trip I just did sketches, painting had to wait for future trips.

But, back to the book.  The author is hard core in his pursuit of events and locations to paint, as you might expect I guess, and this shows in the inclusion of so much information you would never expect to have to think about and which you will simply not find in any other book.  

If you work your way though this book, take your time and set small goals for yourself, you WILL end up out of your studio in the world sketching and painting, and you will NOT look back!  

This is a beautiful book fulled with unique advice and wonderful paintings.

I love it.  

You can buy it on Amazon here.  https://amzn.to/3y8fMOF