Book Review: Field Sketching for Environmental Designers

Detailed guide to environmental design

As the title of the book suggests, this book is for environmental designers, more specifically for those who work with landscape architecture and urban design.

The author Chip Sullivan is an artist and professor at Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley. This book covers the thought process for urban planning through the use of sketching, and features numerous sketching techniques.

The chapters in this book are as follows:

1. Woods, groves and grids
2. The gesture of landscape: plants, people, space
3. Plein-air watercolor: pools, techniques, adventures
4. Cityscapes: the urban Journal
5. Pictorial maps: visual essays and serial observation
6. The city sketch expedition: plazas, parks, and art
7. Drawn on the move
8. Drawing ecologies

The contents in this book are presented just like a sketchbook. The book teaches design thinking, on how you can design spaces that suit the purposes, making sure that form and function work together.

There are plenty of sketches with handwritten notes, thankfully very legible. The book is packed with tips for drawing different subjects from the environment, organic or inorganic, structured or not. There are also several exercises, aka homework, for you to try. There's even a chapter on drawing infographics-style maps. Also included are sketches from other designers so that you can look at a variety of styles.

This 200-page paperback covers a lot of content. There is plenty of insight that will benefit both beginners and advanced landscape or architecture designers.

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

This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook.