The Urban Sketching Handbook: Drawing Expressive People

 

Drawing Expressive People is a part of the Urban Sketching Handbook series - this volume with tutorial instruction by Róisín Curé. Due out 22nd Dec 2020 from Quarto on their Quarry imprint, it's 112 pages and will be available in flexibound and ebook formats. 

This is a concise and well made book covering some essential concepts for capturing people in an urban setting. The emphasis is on speed, fluidity, building technique and consistency, distilling the essential personality of the subject and rendering them into the sketchbook reliably and aesthetically. Although the book is aimed at moderately advanced students to professionals, there are takeaways here for artists of every level.

The layout is logical; the first section contains tutorial "keys" of varying difficulty: tools, supplies and techniques, challenges, proportions, poses & action, color & light. The second section contains a series of galleries: on the move, light & shadow, creative color, and capturing memories. 

The study tutorials are arranged thematically: architecture & cityscapes, understanding perspective, people & motion, and working with color. The overall feel of the book is rich in technique, useful, and varied and I saw so many things which got my fingers itching to jump in and start drawing. I think most (non)artists are a lot more shy about drawing on paper/media and this book has a lot of good suggestions for picking up materials and making a start.

Four stars. I really liked this book but I'm not exactly sure what takeaways were  valuable for me personally. A great deal of the information was diffuse and philosophical. (Not without value, just less specifically relevant to rendering specific human subjects reliably and with improved technical expertise).  It could possibly make a valuable text for more formal classroom/group type instruction. There's a *lot* of information included here. 

The authors have also included a useful checklist of personal goal challenges to tick off as they're achieved (practice drawing feet, subjects on their phones, sketch the hair of 5 people in unrealistic colors, and many more). The challenge checklist could also make a nice starting point for assignments in a classroom or lecture setting.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.