Book Review: Barcelona: Five Routes for Sketching Travelers

This is a rather niche book targeted at sketchers in Barcelona. I guess it's another book to ride on the popularity of the urban sketching movement.

The book presents 5 routes in Barcelona that has significant history and invites its readers to check out those places and sketch them in the book. At the start of each route is a map with interesting locations highlighted. And the next few pages feature partially completed sketches that invite you to draw on the empty spaces. Captions that talk about the places are written in Spanish and English.

This book reminds me of sticker books where you have to collect all the stickers to complete the book. Here, you have to visit all the places and draw them to complete the book. It certainly a fun way to go about discovering Barcelona.

So this isn't really a sketchbook unless you complete it yourself. Paper quality of the book is suited for pen, ink and pencil or coloured pencils. Water medium, paint and markers are not going to work well.

The text and city plans are from Jordi Carreras. The black and white line art are from Jordina Bartolome. Lapin provided a few colour illustrations and the cover art.

Overall, it's an interesting concept for the book. However, those who will enjoy it are limited to sketchers located or traveling to Barcelona.

Barcelona: Five Routes for Sketching Travelers (Sketching on Location) is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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