Book Review: Sketching from the Imagination: An Insight into Creative Drawing

Sketching from the Imagination is a wonderful 320-page paperback collection of sketches from 50 artists. It's always a delight to look through other people sketches, especially the good ones, and there are plenty to see in this thick volume.

The sketches compiled are all drawn from imagination. There are scenes of fantasy, character and creature designs, some location art, sometimes whimsical drawings, loose sketches, detailed sketches, and other amazing line drawings. Majority I would say are still character and creature art. Most of the stuff in the book are good enough as concept art, actually in a sense they all are.

I like checking out the different styles and techniques. There are the cartoony stuff, superhero comics style, amazing pencil and pen hatching, shading, use of black, drawing on toned paper and more. Some you can see are done quickly and loose. Some are very elaborate with detailed designs and shading.

The artists are featured alphabetically. Each has around 6 pages of coverage with a brief commentary on why they sketch and their inspiration. It's not really an instructional book, more for sparks of inspiration. All the sketches also come with brief captions.

I collect a lot of sketchbooks, and I really enjoyed looking through this one.

It's an inspiring book for those who like art, and of course sketchbooks, and probably will get you inspired to start sketching.

If you like this sketchbook, I would also recommend the following:

• ImagineFX Sketchbook
• Sketching Times 1
• Sketching Times 2
• KATSUYA TERADA 10 TEN - 10 Years Retrospective -
• Mattias Unfiltered: The Sketchbook Art of Mattias Adolfsson
• Kim Jung-Gi 2007 & 2011 Sketch Collection
• Kim Jung-Gi 2013 Sketch Collection
• The First in Line
• Sketch Book for the Artist
• The Daily Zoo
• 0レンジ(オレンジ)~森本晃司作品集~ (Orange / Koji Morimoto / Scrapbook)

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Sketching from the Imagination: An Insight into Creative Drawing is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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