art books reviewed

As per the title of the book, Fast Sketch­ing Tech­niques is about sketch­ing quickly and on the spot. It does not really teach gen­eral sketch­ing tech­niques, but focuses on how to get a scene down in 10 min­utes.

For this, the author, David Rankin, uses only one method: a very soft, dark 9B pen­cil to draw the main lines, and a blend­ing tool to shade. This book only cov­ers this one method.

Light and shad­ing, accord­ing to him, is key to cap­tur­ing the mood of a scene. He pro­vides many step-by-step expla­na­tions on how to sketch cer­tain sub­jects, and how to shade with the blend­ing tool to bring a quick sketch to life. Shad­ing with the blend­ing tool lends a water­colour wash look to the sketches.

There are not many step-by-step images of the draw­ing process (except in the chap­ter on ani­mals), but most of the instruc­tions detail the sequence he used to get to a final sketch (which is shown). There are also a cou­ple of before-and-after shad­ing exam­ples to show us how impor­tant light­ing is.

His book mainly teaches by ask­ing you to fol­low his sequence of sketch­ing (e.g. out­line head of tiger, add eyes, nose, mouth, attach chest, leg, paws, add body and tail, finally throw in stripes and shad­ows), which is great for begin­ners, but per­haps too basic for those who already sketch a little.

While the book was writ­ten in a read­able man­ner, I find that the author pushes his blend­ing tool tech­nique too often, and gives the impres­sion that his is the only method that can cre­ate moods of a scene in a short time.

I did obtain some valu­able tips from read­ing this book, such as how to see and sim­plify the light val­ues of any scene or object, as well as to put more thought into the light source.

I don’t per­son­ally like the lines or shad­ings in his exam­ples. I love look­ing at beau­ti­ful lines and sim­ple, but gor­geous, hatch­ing, and so not all the sketches in this book were inspi­ra­tional. He says that shad­ing with the blend­ing tool is the only way to record a scene quickly, but I dis­agree as some of the sketches in Draw­ing Birds were prob­a­bly done just as quickly (birds move a lot!!!) but with more care­fully marked, good-looking lines. Some review­ers on Ama­zon have com­mented that his sketches were child­like, and I thought that of his ani­mals and peo­ple. How­ever, I did like his architecture/landscape sketches and some of his water­colour sketches in Payne’s Gray, which showed great use of light values.

Per­sonal pref­er­ences aside, I believe his meth­ods are suit­able for sketch­ing as a study for a larger water­colour (as David does), for your illus­tra­tive jour­nal, or when you really don’t have time (in your car stuck in traf­fic?). Some peo­ple who reviewed the book on Ama­zon found it use­ful and gave it good ratings.

If you are truly inter­ested in learn­ing drawing/sketching tech­niques, whether you are an absolute begin­ner or not, I would rec­om­mend that you invest in a copy of Draw­ing on the Right Side of the Brain instead. With prac­tice, you should be able to sketch quicker and with any medium. I cur­rently make 10 minute ball­point pen and pen­cil sketches of my col­leagues dur­ing seminars.

This book is no longer avail­able on Ama­zonor the Book Depos­i­tory, though you will be able to find it on the Ama­zon Mar­ket­place and stores such as Abe­Books.