Dare to Sketch: A Guide to Drawing on the Go

by Felix Scheinberger

Overview

An inspirational, instructional, and visually stimulating guide to sketching and drawing. Dare to Sketch is filled with practical tips about which materials to use, a variety of subject matter ranging from easy to more challenging, and wisdom about overcoming creative blocks and fear of making mistakes.

A whimsical beginner's guide to sketching, covering all of the important basics: what kind of notebook to buy, what drawing materials to use, ideas for subject matter, and daily exercises. Includes inviting, inspirational, and idiosyncratic tips (don't start on the first page of your sketchbook!), Dare to Sketch is gorgeously illustrated with the author's unique and contemporary art style.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399579554
Publisher:	Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony
Publication date:	09/19/2017
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

FELIX SCHEINBERGER is a prolific German illustrator, artist, and designer. He is the author and illustrator of Urban Watercolor Sketching as well as several books in German on watercolors, and he has illustrated more than fifty children's books in the last decade. His work has appeared in magazines including
Harvard Business Manager and Psychology Today.

Read an Excerpt

Why use a sketchbook?

The entry of digital media into all spheres of design and artistic work has narrowed the world of designers, artists, and illustrators to a very small space: our desks. The consequence of this is that we lose a little of our contact with the outside world. We sit at the computer and when we want to draw a subject from outside, we simply google it.

The book you are holding is an attempt at something else. First of all, it contains instructions for drawing and sketching. It deals with the basics and tips and especially the fun of sketching. In addition, this book aims to convey that drawing is a medium that opens up new and larger spaces: spaces in our inner world and in the outside world. Drawing encompasses imagination and knowledge and is one of the few artistic fields in which we experience our subjects on location firsthand. By drawing things, we reflect reality anew. We are no longer processing someone else’s images, but going out into the world and looking at it with our own eyes. A sketchbook enables us to enhance our perspective and thereby enhance our world.

In addition, there is something authentic and personal about drawings. If we only google subjects, we are faced with the problem that we are all using the same images, narrowing our view of the world through the hierarchic funneling process of search engines.

We are presently experiencing a tremendous renaissance in drawing. The genuine is in demand. The vast possibilities of image processing have damaged the credibility of photography. Drawings are enjoying a boom because they are authentic. We artists vouch for our drawings. By doing and experiencing it ourselves, we personally guarantee the authenticity of our pictures. The obvious subjectivity and intimacy of drawn pictures make the medium paradoxically more “real” than photographs or googled images. This means that drawings also are gaining documentary relevance—which leads us to the sketchbook.

My sketchbook is something very personal. I draw in it for me and not for others; I use it to describe my world and my life. I am interested in the world I live in, and in a conscious and prolonged process that lasts longer than that of taking a snapshot. I deal with the world. Drawing is also a sensual process: we draw people differently when we associate an odor with them. A meal that we draw will look different if it doesn’t taste good, and we will draw our own dog differently than some unknown animal.

A sketchbook is just the right place to implement these impressions: it is a personal, human medium. And therein lies its gains—for us, as well as for art. In order to reap our own experiences we have to walk out the door. And when we walk out the door, it’s good to take a sketchbook along.

Table of Contents

Foreword
7 Why use a sketchbook?

The sketchbook
8 Which sketchbook?
11 Choosing a format

A book with personality
12 Where to begin?
14 Protecting your sketchbook
17 Notes are permitted
18 Journaling
21 Doodling will set you free
22 The right and wrong ways to draw

Tools
24 Specialty pens
27 Sepia ink
29 Colored pencils
31 Ballpoint pens
32 And, of course, pencils
36 Markers, glitter pens, and beyond
39 Watercolors
44 Collage

Expressing yourself
47 Visualizing your ideas
48 Blind contour drawing
51 Your line is you
52 Mistakes are allowed!
55 Drawing what you feel
56 Drawing is not photography
58 Letting imagination complete the picture
61 Drawing the invisible

The basics
62 Shot settings and westerns
64 Five types of shot settings
68 Getting a feel for composition
70 Weight and balance
72 Collected works
74 Perspective
78 Depth and perspective
80 Landscapes
83 Nature
84 Landscapes and time
87 Coloring landscapes
88 Landscapes in ink
90 Light and shadow
93 Depicting shadows

People
95 People are not objects
96 Friends
98 Passersby
101 Performers
103 Hide and seek
104 Use your head
106 Portraits and caricature
108 Nudes and proportion

Animals
110 “It won’t stop moving!”

Architecture
114 New and old places
117 Consider the everyday
118 Drawing buildings

The right place
120 Stay open
123 Good and bad places
124 Finding your spot
127 Don’t forget to draw the cars
128 Cars mark the era
130 Montages
132 Objects

Traveling
134 When in Rome, see what the Romans see
137 Travel drawings
138 The journeying artist is not a tourist
141 Drawing is a global language
142 The right place at the right time
144 Museums
147 Panoramas
149 Trifles and truffles

Taking it further
151 Reality is not reality is not reality
152 Everything is in flux
154 Redoing drawings
156 Using digital media
157 Whatever happened to da Vinci’s sketchbook?

Editorial Reviews

The new go-to resource for anyone who has ever had interest in creating within a sketchbook.”
—STEVEN PETERMAN, founder of The Sketchbook Project

From the Publisher

★ 11/15/2017
Scheinberger's (Urban Watercolor Sketching) book is filled with drawings selected from his own deep sketchbook archives, as well as his thoughtful and eloquent insights, which are as likely to explain humorously a particular technique as they are to ruminate philosophically. Chapters cover tools and techniques; a few drawing fundamentals; observation skills, creativity, and creative practice; and subjects to sketch, including people, animals, architecture, everyday environments, and distant travel. Lots of practical advice helps with everything from how to confront a blank sketchbook to the best way to catch a subject that won't sit still. VERDICT For readers of any artistic skill level who want to expand their creativity and have fun doing it.

Library Journal