Book Review: An Excuse to Draw: Tommy Kane Sketches the World

Inspiring sketchbook

As someone who likes to sketch, I always find it inspiring to look at other people's sketchbooks. That's because you understand how much work goes into making those sketches, especially if they are done outdoors, in all sorts of conditions.

Tommy Kane has worked as a creative director in advertising for over 30 years. And he's an avid sketcher. I've been following his blog, sketches and adventures for quite a while now. It's great to see that he has finally released his sketches in book form.

An Excuse to Draw collects 8 years worth of sketches. The book's a 216-page hardcover. Many sketches are printed full page which enables you to read his notes. On selected pages, he also talk about his experiences while sketching abroad.

The sketches included are those he drew while traveling to different countries and cities. Morocco, Lebanon, Barcelona, Paris, Vienna, Prague, Beijing, Tokyo, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sydney, the different states in USA and more.

He has a nice style characterised by bold uniform ink lines and coloured by either watercolours or coloured pencils. He works with sketchbooks and also on larger paper.

The drawings are in detail and captures a scene from the places he has been to. I find it charming to go through the drawings, reading about his hand written notes about things that happen while he was sketching.

The introduction of the book is quite personal and moving. The foreword written by Michelangelo (yes that one, I thought he was dead too) is quite funny.

It's a wonderful book. One of my 2014 favourite artbooks. For the price of the book, you get this amount of work, I think it's terrific value.

Highly recommended.

And if you like this book, also check out other travelogue sketchbooks that I have reviewed.

An Excuse to Draw: Tommy Kane Sketches the World is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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