Book Review: The Artist's Guide to Sketching by James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade

Urban sketching as an adventure

The Artist's Guide to Sketching was originally published in 1982 and was written by James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade. This 2025 edition has been updated with additional full-color visuals from archives of Gurney and the Kinkade family estate, and there's some writeup talking about the book's origins and the friendship.

In 1980, the authors were two students who wanted to discover America, so they just packed their sketchbooks and climbed into a boxcar at Los Angeles freight yard and started their adventure. They collected plenty of sketches, stories and insight and decided to write this book to share their experiences.

This book was written as an instructional book rather than a travelogue. In other words, there are many drawing tips and techniques shared, but the topics are grouped according to subject matter rather than chronologically like a travelogue.

This book is not just an instructional book but also an adventure. While reading, it reminded me of my solo 2-week sketching trip in Bali. There are so many stories in the book that I can relate too. For example, page 33's suggestion of "It also helps to wear an absent-minded expression" had me laughing. That's what I do when sketching on the train while commuting to work. "Try to master the ability to look bored." I'm pretty good at that too.

This 176-page book has many tips for sketching on locations covering a large variety of subjects, urban scenes, people, animals, nature, landscapes, more. There's also a chapter on drawing from imagination, on what you can do with the visual vocabulary you've build up from years of sketching.

I love this book. The stories from the travel are what makes this book so interesting. If you like urban sketching or drawing, this is definitely the book to get. I'm glad this book was reprinted. I didn't even know it existed.

Here are the chapters and topics included:

• Chapter 1: THE EXPERIENCE OF SKETCHING (Coping with the Weather, Sketching at Night, Sitting or Standing?, Dealing with Curious Spectators, Being Inconspicuous, At Home Amid the Elements
• Chapter 2: MATERIALS (Sketchbooks, Pencils, Pens, Markers, Wash and Drybrush, Sketchboxes and Carrying Cases, Experiencing Your Materials)
• Chapter 3: ACHIEVING ACCURACY: (When to Use an Underdrawing, How Much Underdrawing is Necessary, Establishing the Large Shapes, Measuring Lengths, Measuring Slopes, Using Perspective Guidelines, Constructing with Geometric Forms, Completed Underdrawing, The Final Execution)
• Chapter 4: CAPTURING MOTION (Freezing Motion: A New Way of Drawing, Learning to Observe Motion, Training Your Memory, Getting It Down Fast, The Scribble Approach, The Gestural Approach, The Mannikin Approach, The Tonal Mass Approach, When Your Subject Moves Unexpectedly, Places to Go for Motion Sketching)
• Chapter 5: CREATING MOOD (Choosing a Subject, Noting Impressions, Composing with Thumbnails, Selectivity, Center of Interest, Dramatic Opposition, Delicacy, Mystery, Structure and Expression)
• Chapter 6: USING IMAGINATION (Dare to be Creative, Being Imaginative On-the-Spot, Exaggeration, Changing Context and Scale, Using Anthropomorphism, Additions and Combinations, Feeding the Imagination, Becoming More Imaginative)
• Chapter 7: STUDYING NATURE (Nature: Your Personal Drawing Workshop, The Experience of Nature Sketching, Plants, Animals, Sketching at the Zoo, Natural History Museum, Clouds, Rocks and Landforms, The Benefits of Studying Nature)
• Chapter 8: SKETCHING PEOPLE (Finding Raw Material, Exaggerating Character Traits, The Cartoon Approach, Portraying People in Their Environment, Two Characters, Group Composition, The On-The-Spot Portrait, Making People Sketches Come Alive, Family and Friends: Your Free Models)
• Chapter 9: EXPLORING THE MAN-MADE WORLD (Begin with the Commonplace, Sketching the Home, Indicating Building Exteriors, Signs and Letterforms, A New Look at Machines, Using Clutter, On-The-Spot Spot Research, Using Written Notes, Thinking As a Documentary Artist, The Joy of Exploration)
• Chapter 10: SKETCHING IN YOUR LIFE (Keeping Specialized Sketchbooks, Developing Sketches into Paintings, Sharing Sketches With Others, Sketching Alone or With Others)

Here are direct links to the book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.com.au | Amazon.co.jp