art books reviewed

by Thomas Wang

Although not so obvi­ous from the title, Pen­cil Sketch­ingis really about sketch­ing land­scapes and archi­tec­ture. It’s a pretty great book with so many great sketches that it makes you want to get out there and draw noth­ing but buildings!

In this book, Wang gives a solid overview of pen­cil use, the strokes pro­duced by var­i­ous kinds of pen­cils and dif­fer­ent grips and hand/arm move­ments for sketch­ing. What I really liked was the sam­ples and exer­cises of strokes that are use­ful for sketch­ing land­scapes and build­ings. Some might find this overly sim­plis­tic, but as a begin­ner, I thought it was useful!

There are many pages ded­i­cated to sketch­ing land­scapes, espe­cially fea­tures that typ­i­cally sur­round build­ings. I espe­cially like his exam­ples and tips for draw­ing trees as it’s one thing I strug­gle with! There is also a sec­tion on land­forms (hills and val­leys) and water. Another chap­ter cov­ers com­po­si­tion — what to empha­size and what to dis­card, and how to pro­vide bal­ance to a sketch. And for those who don’t nec­es­sar­ily want to draw on loca­tion, Wang also has great tips for sketch­ing from mem­ory, in par­tic­u­lar for estab­lish­ing a frame­work with the right scale.

In gen­eral, the book has quite lit­tle text but lots of sketches. Most of the impor­tant lessons in the book are explained through sketches, for exam­ples, how to shade to cre­ate con­trast and give the impres­sion of depth. In fact, the whole last chap­ter (all 20 pages of it) only has exam­ples of Wang’s sketches. How­ever, even with­out text, the book has a lot of use­ful lessons. If you hate read­ing, this is def­i­nitely a good book for you! I, on the other hand, LOVE read­ing so I wish this book had more pages for me to read!

You can have a look at many more sam­ple pages of Pen­cil Sketch­ing on Ama­zon, as well as other reader reviews.

As a fan of archi­tec­ture sketches and loca­tion sketch­ing, Pen­cil Sketch­ingis def­i­nitely a book I would like to have in my library (The copy I am review­ing is from the library of my university’s Archi­tec­ture depart­ment). I admire Wang’s sketch­ing style and clean lines, so the whole book is eye candy! How­ever, I do crave more con­tent and will con­tinue search­ing for a bet­ter book on sketch­ing architecture.

Pen­cil Sketch­ing, 2nd edi­tion, is avail­able from most online stores, includ­ing Ama­zon US, Ama­zon UK, and the Book Depos­i­tory. If you’re think­ing of buy­ing any books from these stores, do con­sider get­ting them via my links… I get a com­mis­sion that will go towards buy­ing more books to review. Thanks!