The Urban Sketching Handbook Drawing Expressive People

The Urban Sketching Handbook: Drawing Expressive People is an extremely useful book for artists of all abilities from beginner through to advanced. It covers one of those areas that many artists have difficulties with, putting characterful people in their drawings. This can be hard to master. Having a book dedicated to the subject is ideal. It covers everything from basic drawing to including characterful people that help convey the story or scene. There are wide variety of examples and exercises to try and many different techniques and tips. Overall an excellent book.

A reference book that I will return to, and an inspiring collection of pictures that I can now attempt with more confidence than before, because the book is for beginners as well as advanced, giving tips and materials used for sketching in an urban environment. I love the observational skills that the artist shows, the attention to detail. A book that did not disappointment me, in fact a must have book.

Thank you Netgalley for letting me read this book in return for an honest review.

I really liked this book as it explains materials, how to do it, how to get past any challenges and so forth. I haven't been able to use it outside due to Covid-19 but I have used it for subjects in my house and found it very useful!

Rating: 5⭐
Would I Read It Again? Yes
Would I Recommend it? Yes

Let's face it (pun fully intended) – you can't really go into urban sketching without knowing how to draw and paint people! That's why this book is very fitting as the latest addition to the Urban Sketching Handbook series.

As I admire the fun, colourful and expressive sketches of Roisin Cure, this book was a treat for me. It is full of examples from her sketchbooks. I have followed her blog for a long time and enjoy not only her art but also her humorous writing and sometimes funny drawings, some of which she has included in this book.

The author addresses five keys to people-sketching. Besides the mandatory tools and supplies, these are covered:

The challenges. What do you say or do if people discover you drawing them, what do you do when they move or leave? Who do you draw? I love where she gives people more than two arms or hands to show that they are moving!
The proportions. You won't find the conventional “how-many-heads high” technique discussed in detail here and you won’t need it!
Poses and actions. Learn the common poses, capture the body language.
Color and light. Color for skin, hair and clothes. Light and shadow.

You will find lots of sketches to showcase all the above. I do wish though that more illustrations were used to support some of the tips (such as placements for the features of the face) and better swatches to show paint mixtures for the skin tones.

The book ends with an inspiring gallery of sketches from urban sketchers from all over the world.

Overall, a good addition to the series.

You truly can't go wrong with an Urban Sketching book. Every one of the books in these series is better than the next. And this one is no exception.

It's always challenging to draw people at all so I was super excited to read this book. It starts with a lot of different ideas around how to capture different folk out in the "wild" and the book starts with tackling this challenge head on. How to handle people moving, leaving, getting upset at you for drawing them etc.

Then it tackles the proportions, poses and actions and color and light. It has all the bits of what it takes to draw people and ends with a beautiful gallery of sketches of people. It has some great tips to help you simplify this scary process.

I wish there were a few more specific examples of how to implement the tips, shortcuts, and ways of approaching different options. As always, though, what one needs is practice and not just reading books, of course :)

In the end there is a full gallery of wide range of sketches from different urban sketchers, always inspiring!

with gratitude to Quarto Publishing Group – Quarry and netgalley for an advanced copy in return for an honest review.

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 author has 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.