Freehand Drawing and Discovery: Urban Sketching and Concept Drawing for Designers

by James Richards

Designed to help architects, planners, and landscape architects use freehand sketching to quickly and creatively generate design concepts, Freehand Drawing and Discovery uses an array of cross-disciplinary examples to help readers develop their drawing skills. Taking a "both/and" approach, this book provides step-by-step guidance on drawing tools and techniques and offers practical suggestions on how to use these skills in conjunction with digital tools on real-world projects. Illustrated with nearly 300 full color drawings, the book includes a series of video demonstrations that reinforces the sketching techniques.

Genres: Art, Drawing, Nonfiction, Architecture, Design, Reference

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 11, 2013

Reviews

[Parka]

( More pictures on my blog )

Freehand Drawing and Discovery is a book on sketching. Written by James Richards, a member of Urban Sketchers, the book is a collection of tips and insight on sketching.

The tips are practical and accompanied by many beautiful examples from the author and other guest artists. There are info on creating textures, drawing simple figures in perspective, understanding what can be added to make a good picture, etc.

It's not a totally hands-on tutorial book so you'll need to know how to draw first at a basic level. The book is more like a supplement to help you improve your observation and understanding of the scene.

There are various guest artists interviews with Michael Vergason, Kevin Sloan, Luis Ruiz, Gabriel Campanario, Liz Steel and others. They share their stories and experiences and you can understand easily why they are thrilled by sketching, and be inspired by them.

The latter chapters cover more experimental sketching, like using the Google Sketchup 3D software for reference, and sketching over photographs.

The book also includes more than an hour of helpful online tutorial videos.

It's an inspiring book. Highly recommended to everyone who sketches.

- See more at: http://www.parkablogs.com/content/boo...

[Michael]

This is a useful, fun and well-illustrated book for anyone interested in drawing or design. I've taught landscape graphics for eight years and I learned a ton from reading this book. Although Jim Richards is an expert (and makes me feel like a bumbling fool at graphics), he's made the book very approachable and easy to understand. He's also included input from other designers about their process and the manner in which they use drawings to explore and improve the world around them; this makes the book much richer than it would have been otherwise. While the book contains many practical tips and explanations, Richards never makes drawing into a formulaic, money-making enterprise for designers. As the title states, Richards sees drawing as a means of discovery and a way of generating ideas and learning more about the world. Simply put, this is an informative and inspirational book and one that every designer should consider reading.

[Susan]

This book is a fantastic resource for beginners and I think those of us a little further along but still knowing we have something to learn. I enjoyed:

>how Richards breaks down ideas of perspective, shapes, colours, etc.
>the way he explains perspective - a light went off for me on this topic that I have struggled with for so long
>that Richards breaks down how he makes a drawing e.g. 'where to start?'
>that he included work from other artists to get different ideas, advice, styles, etc.
>That he literally shows rather than tells about the process, including numerous sketches at various stages of the creation process (mostly his own, but as above many of others as well)
>that Richards knows that each artist has their own style and that he encourages artists to explore and develop their own styles
>he gives some suggestions on supplies
>that he makes the suggestions, gives advice and encouragement but is neither didactic nor prescriptive about it
>and so much more

I even enjoyed the final two chapters dedicated to creating design and using electronic design tools even though I am not a designer and have no plans to become one. Though I can think of two or three of my more technologically-oriented friends who would enjoy playing with design software with me.

I borrowed this book from the library. However, I think it is a solid enough resource that I have added it to my 'to be purchased list'. It has a bit of a price to it, but from what I can see the cost would be far outweighed by the benefits.

[Natalia]

To be honest the book is too superficial for designers, more of a coffee table book b/c there's very few instructional pages, advice is scattered and rare. The author only touches on the subjects, and although the book is abundant in illustrations, most of them are not equipped with helpful captions & the captions rather have a message like "and this another cool sketch I made." But I do want to mention that because the book has so many illustrations, it was interesting & somewhat helpful to study those. However, you don't need to purchase a book for that.

What I didn't like was:
* how many times the author repeats himself making some points and those points being borderline captain Obvious ones, e.g. if you sketch often ,the quality will come soon, ... the more you draw the better you'll get, ... sketch every day and you'll learn.
* generic repetition and redundancy in stylistic & semantic forms used by the author. The book could be 1/3 of its size and not suffer in message conveyed
* how much author advertises his work, skills, and just a general feeling of the author bragging about his sketches. That could be somewhat justified if the author provided more instructions / tips but alas - those were very limited.

Final conclusion: for me this is a flip through book in the book store -30 min of skimming through would do for me. I wouldn't keep the book & will give it away to smb else or a library, isn't worth to be kept in my library unfortunately.

[Konstancja]

Freehand Drawing and Discovery is a book that explores the use of freehand drawing as a tool for urban sketching and concept development in design. The book is written by James Richards, an architect and design professor, and provides a detailed guide to techniques for freehand drawing and sketching.

One key learning point from the book is the importance of freehand drawing as a way to quickly and efficiently communicate ideas. Richards discusses how freehand drawing can help designers to quickly sketch out concepts and ideas, and how it can be a more efficient and effective way to communicate design ideas compared to using more formal drafting tools.

Another key learning point is the importance of using freehand drawing to explore and develop design concepts. Richards advocates for using freehand drawing as a way to quickly prototype and iterate on ideas, and how it can help designers to more easily visualize and explore different design options.

Overall, I would rate the book 4/5. The book provides a wealth of useful and practical tips and techniques for using freehand drawing in the design process. Richards' writing is engaging and easy to follow, and he provides a wealth of examples and illustrations to help illustrate key concepts. However, some readers may find that the focus on freehand drawing may not be as applicable to certain types of design projects or industries.

[anh]

a quite thorough look at how to draw environments for landscape+/architects. i like how he broke down the process for different sketches and explained how different parts of it contributed to making the whole piece. i'm at a stage now where i can tell when my art is lacking some mysterious factor that would elevate it, but am generally unable to pinpoint what it is. this book does a nice job of explaining those factors so i can better pick apart my work.

there's a section dedicated to using digital tools for architecture drawings and i sort of skimmed this since i'm not that interested. but there was a good point i liked:

on the author questioning whether it's cheating to trace photos/3d models as part of the process to explore ideas, the response was: "we're not producing art per se, we're designers and we're working in the real world. our ideas have real consequences. it's vitally important that the context of our ideas be depicted accurately so that decisions can be based on good information."

[David Malmberg]

Outstanding overview of Urban Sketching from an architect’s prospective

James Richards is a wonderful writer, teacher and artist! This book proves that statement. The added benefit of the accompanying videos to illustrate the major lessons really makes this book truly unique and very special!

[Stephen]

This was an essential read for anyone interested in refining their sketches. My only complaint is that the link to the online tutorials were missing, but the author kindly responded and gave me the publishers link which still work.

[James]

Some great examples of sketching and design. Hand drawing seems to be more useful than I thought before.

[T. Fowler]

Very thoughtfully laid-out book, clearly presenting techniques useful for both urban sketchers and landscape designers. Lots of examples.

[Shabnam]

Be prolific first. Aim for quantity, and quality will take care of itself.
Quality of creative input = Quality of creative output.

[Allen Martin]

I’m not sure what I think of this book, more inspirational than educational.

[G]

Meant for a professional, not amateur audience, but still interesting to see how stretching relates to actual design consulting work.

[melydia]

I've read a decent amount on urban sketching and drawing your life, but this book is from the perspective of architecture and landscape design. I skipped the last chapter on digital drawing, but the rest was interesting, if not quite what I was looking for. Lessons on perspective and the color wheel aren't really my thing. I'm definitely a drawing-your-life kind of person, with little interest in design. That said, I could see it being useful for someone interested in design, even if I have no idea how much new ground it actually covers.

[Jackie Craven]

I'm working my way through this book slowly because I want to practice each element before I move on. The book includes access to some wonderful online tutorials.

[Ha San]

how can i read this book?

[GomGommark]

Awesome. It's good for beginners who want to start urban sketching or drawing journal.

[Pat Loughery]

Targeted at architects.