The Artist's Guide to Sketching: The Classic Book about Making Art on Location - Paperback

by James Gurney (Author), Thomas Kinkade (Author)

A bold new edition of the groundbreaking book by two of America's most prominent visual artists, James Gurney (Dinotopia, Color and Light), and Thomas Kinkade, freshly updated with a new introduction, archival photographs, and illuminating text to guide a new generation of illustrators.

"If I could only have one drawing book on my shelf, it would be this one." -Shari Blaukopf, author of the Urban Sketching Handbook: Working With Color

Since its release in 1982, The Artist's Guide to Sketching has become a classic art guide for students and laypeople around the world. The book includes instruction and artwork by James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade--two students who would go on to fame with Dinotopia (Gurney) and as the "Painter of Light" (Kinkade). This new edition restores the classic text with updated full-color visuals and a special section chronicling the book's origins and the friendship, drawing on archives from Gurney and the Kinkade family estate.

Chapters and topics include:

• Chapter 1: THE EXPERIENCE OF SKETCHING (Coping with the Weather, Sketching at Night, Sitting or Standing?, Dealing with Curious Spectators, Being Inconspicuous, At Home Amid the Elements
• Chapter 2: MATERIALS (Sketchbooks, Pencils, Pens, Markers, Wash and Drybrush, Sketchboxes and Carrying Cases, Experiencing Your Materials)
• Chapter 3: ACHIEVING ACCURACY: (When to Use an Underdrawing, How Much Underdrawing is Necessary, Establishing the Large Shapes, Measuring Lengths, Measuring Slopes, Using Perspective Guidelines, Constructing with Geometric Forms, Completed Underdrawing, The Final Execution)
• Chapter 4: CAPTURING MOTION (Freezing Motion: A New Way of Drawing, Learning to Observe Motion, Training Your Memory, Getting It Down Fast, The Scribble Approach, The Gestural Approach, The Mannikin Approach, The Tonal Mass Approach, When Your Subject Moves Unexpectedly, Places to Go for Motion Sketching)
• Chapter 5: CREATING MOOD (Choosing a Subject, Noting Impressions, Composing with Thumbnails, Selectivity, Center of Interest, Dramatic Opposition, Delicacy, Mystery, Structure and Expression)
• Chapter 6: USING IMAGINATION (Dare to be Creative, Being Imaginative On-the-Spot, Exaggeration, Changing Context and Scale, Using Anthropomorphism, Additions and Combinations, Feeding the Imagination, Becoming More Imaginative)
• Chapter 7: STUDYING NATURE (Nature: Your Personal Drawing Workshop, The Experience of Nature Sketching, Plants, Animals, Sketching at the Zoo, Natural History Museum, Clouds, Rocks and Landforms, The Benefits of Studying Nature)
• Chapter 8: SKETCHING PEOPLE (Finding Raw Material, Exaggerating Character Traits, The Cartoon Approach, Portraying People in Their Environment, Two Characters, Group Composition, The On-The-Spot Portrait, Making People Sketches Come Alive, Family and Friends: Your Free Models)
• Chapter 9: EXPLORING THE MAN-MADE WORLD (Begin with the Commonplace, Sketching the Home, Indicating Building Exteriors, Signs and Letterforms, A New Look at Machines, Using Clutter, On-The-Spot Spot Research, Using Written Notes, Thinking As a Documentary Artist, The Joy of Exploration)
• Chapter 10: SKETCHING IN YOUR LIFE (Keeping Specialized Sketchbooks, Developing Sketches into Paintings, Sharing Sketches With Others, Sketching Alone or With Others)

Author Biography

Thomas Kinkade was a prolific and widely known American painter celebrated for his idyllic depictions of landscapes, gardens, cottages, and small-town life. He was often referred to as the "Painter of Light." Born in Sacramento, California, in 1958, he attended UC Berkeley and Art Center College of Design before working on this book and the background paintings for the animated film Fire and Ice. After returning to his hometown of Placerville in 1985, Kinkade created a publishing and licensing company which reproduced his works on a wide variety of products. His brand remains influential after his death in 2012, and his legacy endures through the charitable work of The Kinkade Family Foundation and the ongoing publishing and licensing efforts of the business that bears his name.

James Gurney is an artist and author best known for his New York Times bestselling book series Dinotopia, detailing a fantastical world where humans and dinosaurs coexist. In the 1980s, he painted science fiction paperback covers and archaeological reconstructions for National Geographic Magazine. Gurney's original oil paintings have been shown in over 35 one-man exhibitions in museums such as the Smithsonian, the Norman Rockwell Museum, and the Delaware Art Museum. He wrote Color and Light and Imaginative Realism based on his popular blog Gurney Journey and more than 90 consecutive articles for International Artist Magazine. His YouTube channel about painting on location has over 500k subscribers.