Book Review: Freehand Drawing and Discovery: Urban Sketching and Concept Drawing for Designers

Freehand Drawing and Discovery is a book on sketching. Written by James Richards, a member of Urban Sketchers, the book is a collection of tips and insight on sketching.

The tips are practical and accompanied by many beautiful examples from the author and other guest artists. There are info on creating textures, drawing simple figures in perspective, understanding what can be added to make a good picture, etc.

It's not a totally hands-on tutorial book so you'll need to know how to draw first at a basic level. The book is more like a supplement to help you improve your observation and understanding of the scene.

There are various guest artists interviews with Michael Vergason, Kevin Sloan, Luis Ruiz, Gabriel Campanario, Liz Steel and others. They share their stories and experiences and you can understand easily why they are thrilled by sketching, and be inspired by them.

The latter chapters cover more experimental sketching, like using the Google Sketchup 3D software for reference, and sketching over photographs.

The book also includes more than an hour of helpful online tutorial videos.

It's an inspiring book. Highly recommended to everyone who sketches.

Freehand Drawing and Discovery: Urban Sketching and Concept Drawing for Designers is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

Visit Amazon to check out more reviews.

If you buy from the links, I get a little commission that helps me get more books to feature.

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