Quick Sketching

Carl Cheek

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780486466088
• eBook ISBN: 9780486146867
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Técnicas artísticas

"Quick sketching" stimulates the artist's ability to rapidly capture a subject's features, expressions, and movements as they are actually happening. A perfect introduction to this invaluable technique, this concise and uniquely organized guide easily helps artists of every capacity explore new ideas and methods for creating powerful, true-to-life works of art.
Discover over one hundred masterfully drawn sketches that wonderfully illustrate the accompanying text. An effective path to acquiring the artistic essentials of the human figure and countenance, as well as busy backgrounds, Quick Sketching offers up innovative, workable methods for quickly—and beautifully—drawing:
• adults
• children
• animals
• interiors
• portraits
• landscapes
. . . and more!
Affordably priced and sure to be viewed and reviewed again and again, Quick Sketching is a worthy addition to the library of every artist!

SELECTED DRAWINGS OF OTHER ARTISTS

I have included the following pages of drawings by other artists in order to give some idea of the variety of personal approach available to those who are filling sketchbooks with rapid sketches. The ones on this and the facing page are by Bernard Gay, a painter fascinated by the lyrical quality of English landscapes. They are taken from a sketchbook and are shorthand notes intended for personal use only, so that he could fix the essential mood and look of landscapes firmly in his mind. And yet, of course, they are not without artistic merit in their own right.

These two pages of drawings are by John Flavian and are also taken from a sketchbook. They fall into the same category as those by Bernard Gay. These perhaps are not concerned with establishing a mood but rather with fixing the essence of a pictorial pattern. They were drawn with a felt-tipped pen and a regular pan in combination.

Notice how easily a felt-tipped pen will produce a solid black as well as a dry brush effect. This saves a lot of time otherwise lost in filling in the tones. These drawings are only slightly reduced in size

The first of these two drawings by Gerald Marks is primarily rhythmic. It took about fifteen or twenty minutes to draw. In order to preserve the flow across the page several foreshortenings have not been stressed.

This seated figure is a study for a portrait. It took longer to draw than the one on the opposite page. In it the lines define the areas they surround, an the eye does not therefore, follow the lines themselves in the rhythmic way they do on this page.

These three pages are from drawings and notes from the Italian sketchbook of Colin Cannon. They were all done with a felt-tipped pen and were made as studies for paintings that would be finished in his studio.

Remember that notes of this kind are made for personal use only and are not meant to do more than act as reminders of a particular action or set of relationships of contrasting forms. Each artist will make entirely different selections in front of the same object—each taking what he needs. For one, it may be the pattern, for another the linear rhythms which seem most significant. One will select the rounded forms in preference to flat or cubic ones. They are all equally ‘true.’ Some may be good drawings, and others may be clumsy and overworked. None of this matters in a sketchbook. The point is whether they contain the relevant information for the artist to use later.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• SIMPLE ANATOMY
• GEOMETRIC CONSTRUCTION
• OPEN AND CLOSED FORMS
• VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL REFERENCES
• TONED PAPER
• CHILDREN AND ANIMALS
• THE DOMESTIC INTERIOR
• PORTRAIT HEADS
• GROUPS OF FIGURES
• PURE LINE
• LANDSCAPE
• BOATS
• SELECTED DRAWINGS OF OTHER ARTISTS