Book Review: Hand Drawn Halifax: Portraits of the city's buildings, landmarks, neighbourhoods and residents

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Halifax is the capital of Nova Scotia, Maritime province in Canada. That's where the author and artist Emma Fitzgerald now lives.

Hand Drawn Halifax is a charming sketchbook that captures the sights and scenes, buildings and everyday life of the city. The sketches are lively, loose and childlike in a way that they actually reminded me of Quentin Blake's style. These are sketches drawn on location with the colours added digitally later on.

Each place or building featured is accompanied by a short history or the author's interaction with people she meets while drawing. She talks about the architecture, such as the Halifax Central Library that's designed to look like a stack of books, discovers a church that houses a concert at night, or talks about people dressing for prom, pitching a tent they bought online and other things she sees on the streets.

Showing the places through sketches and observations has a nice personal touch. I enjoy reading and finding out about the neighbourhood and people.

It's a lovely sketchbook. 128 pages, hardcover.

Hand Drawn Halifax: Portraits of the city's buildings, landmarks, neighbourhoods and residents is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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