Dare to Sketch Read online

  Translation copyright © 2017 by Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz

  Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Felix Scheinberger and Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Watson-Guptill Publications, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  www.watsonguptill.com

  WATSON-GUPTILL and the WG and Horse designs are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC

  Originally published in Germany as Mut zum Skizzenbuch by Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz in 2009. This translation arranged with Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz. Translation by Faith Gibson.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  is on file with the publisher.

  Hardcover ISBN 9780399579554

  Ebook ISBN 9780399579561

  Cover design by Ashley Lima

  v4.1

  a

  Contents

  Foreword

  Why use a sketchbook?

  The sketchbook

  Which sketchbook?

  Choosing a format

  A book with personality

  Where to begin?

  Protecting your sketchbook

  Notes are permitted

  Journaling

  Doodling will set you free

  The right and wrong ways to draw

  Tools

  Specialty pens

  Sepia ink

  Colored pencils

  Ballpoint pens

  And, of course, pencils

  Markers, glitter pens, and beyond

  Watercolors

  Collage

  Expressing yourself

  Visualizing your ideas

  Blind contour drawing

  Your line is you

  Mistakes are allowed!

  Drawing what you feel

  Drawing is not photography

  Letting imagination complete the picture

  Drawing the invisible

  The basics

  Shot settings and westerns

  Five types of shot settings

  Getting a feel for composition

  Weight and balance

  Collected works

  Perspective

  Depth and perspective

  Landscapes

  Nature

  Landscapes and time

  Coloring landscapes

  Landscapes in ink

  Light and shadow

  Depicting shadows

  People

  People are not objects

  Friends

  Passersby

  Performers

  Hide and seek

  Use your head

  Portraits and caricature

  Nudes and proportion

  Animals

  “It won’t stop moving!”

  Architecture

  New and old places

  Consider the everyday

  Drawing buildings

  The right place

  Stay open

  Good and bad places

  Finding your spot

  Don’t forget to draw the cars

  Cars mark the era

  Montages

  Objects

  Traveling

  When in Rome, see what the Romans see

  Travel drawings

  The journeying artist is not a tourist

  Drawing is a global language

  The right place at the right time

  Museums

  Panoramas

  Trifles and truffles

  Taking it further

  Reality is not reality is not reality

  Everything is in flux

  Redoing drawings

  Using digital media

  Whatever happened to da Vinci’s sketchbook?

  Appendix

  About the author

  Also by the author

  Why use a sketchbook?

  The entry of digital media into all spheres of design and artistic work has narrowed the world of designers, artists, and illustrators to a very small space: our desks. The consequence of this is that we lose a little of our contact with the outside world. We sit at the computer and when we want to draw a subject from outside, we simply google it.

  The book you are holding is an attempt at something else. First of all, it contains instructions for drawing and sketching. It deals with the basics and tips and especially the fun of sketching. In addition, this book aims to convey that drawing is a medium that opens up new and larger spaces: spaces in our inner world and in the outside world. Drawing encompasses imagination and knowledge and is one of the few artistic fields in which we experience our subjects on location firsthand. By drawing things, we reflect reality anew. We are no longer processing someone else’s images, but going out into the world and looking at it with our own eyes. A sketchbook enables us to enhance our perspective and thereby enhance our world.

  In addition, there is something authentic and personal about drawings. If we only google subjects, we are faced with the problem that we are all using the same images, narrowing our view of the world through the hierarchic funneling process of search engines.

  We are presently experiencing a tremendous renaissance in drawing. The genuine is in demand. The vast possibilities of image processing have damaged the credibility of photography. Drawings are enjoying a boom because they are authentic. We artists vouch for our drawings. By doing and experiencing it ourselves, we personally guarantee the authenticity of our pictures. The obvious subjectivity and intimacy of drawn pictures make the medium paradoxically more “real” than photographs or googled images. This means that drawings also are gaining documentary relevance—which leads us to the sketchbook.

  My sketchbook is something very personal. I draw in it for me and not for others; I use it to describe my world and my life. I am interested in the world I live in, and in a conscious and prolonged process that lasts longer than that of taking a snapshot. I deal with the world. Drawing is also a sensual process: we draw people differently when we associate an odor with them. A meal that we draw will look different if it doesn’t taste good, and we will draw our own dog differently than some unknown animal.

  A sketchbook is just the right place to implement these impressions: it is a personal, human medium. And therein lies its gains—for us, as well as for art. In order to reap our own experiences we have to walk out the door. And when we walk out the door, it’s good to take a sketchbook along.

  Yours truly,

  Which sketchbook?

  To be honest, you won’t make better drawings just because you purchase a more expensive sketchbook. On the contrary, a valuable book will probably leave you afraid to make mistakes in it. Mistakes are part of the whole process.

  That said, you ought to pay attention to a few things when buying a sketchbook:

  Use acid-free paper. Paper is often bleached with acid. This is not only damaging to the environment, but also to your book in the long term. A little acid always remains in the paper during production and this will break it down over the years. Take a look at a cheap paperback from the sixties: the paper crumbles.

  It is also important that your book is hardbound. Don’t use a wire-bound sketchpad. This binding style has a gap in the middle and you won’t be able to make double-page images.

  In addition, the pages should be sewn and not glued so they do not tear out.

  A decent sketchbook needn’t cost more than ten dollars.

  Tip:

  First of all, write your name and your address in your new sketchbook. If you should ever lose it, you’ll have a chance of getting it back.

  Tip:

  If you choose a book w
ith thicker acid-free paper, you’ll also be able to paint with ink and watercolors.

  Choosing a format

  The format of your sketchbook (large or small, landscape or portrait) is up to you. But I can tell you which I prefer and give you my opinion on what works best for which size. The terms “landscape” and “portrait” already tell you what each format is best suited for. That said, you can draw a beach scene across a double page in a portrait-sized book, but fitting standing figures in extreme landscape formats is difficult. Landscape formats can be great for traveling, though.

  I tend to prefer smaller sketchbooks, like 5 by 7 inches. They are lighter and not as conspicuous as larger options. Hold a few books at the store and let your gut decide which you like best.

  Tip:

  Test your sketchbook to find out whether ink soaks through the pages. In this Moleskine sketchbook, shown above, the page at left displays (clockwise from top left) watercolor, fineliner pen, India ink, industry painter, ballpoint pen, Edding marker, sepia ink, and marker. Notice how the India ink, sepia ink, and Edding marker have seeped through (right).

  Where to begin?

  Artists are familiar with that fear of the empty page, so the big bundle of empty sheets in your sketchbook may be even more daunting. How should you begin? More important, how should you begin without ruining your beautiful new book with an initial mistake?

  You really don’t need to take a course in relaxation techniques. In reality, the fear of the empty page is the fear of making mistakes and not being able to live up to your own demands. That fear is at cross-purposes with the goal of a sketchbook, however: It is your book and its sole purpose is to inspire trial and error! It is not a presentation portfolio. So begin with a deliberately bad drawing. Breaking the ice will make sketching all the easier.

  Tip:

  Don’t begin your book on the first page. Start a new book somewhere in the middle (page 17 is best) and do not work chronologically.

  Protecting your sketchbook

  There you are, sitting in a café or park. The sun is shining, and you’re sipping your coffee and writing notes in a pad. Maybe you’re jotting down some ideas, keeping a journal, or writing a postcard. Now imagine some perfect stranger comes along suddenly, stands next to you, and starts reading your words and making comments. He praises your creativity, corrects your spelling errors, and asks who Sally and Frank are. You’d be flabbergasted!

  And yet, this happens with sketchbooks all the time. There are always people who think they’re skilled enough to rate your work and apparently believe that your drawings are their business.

  Put a stop to it. Protect your sketchbook. Don’t be afraid to say no.

  It’s your sketchbook and yours alone, and should matter to no one else. Once you are aware of this, it becomes a lot easier to work on a sketchbook. You are not drawing for any presumed critics or admirers, but for yourself. You aren’t producing a presentation booklet, but a creative space that consciously allows for mistakes and experiments.

  Your sketchbook is not a public space. Protect it.

  Notes are permitted

  Written notes are not only permitted in sketchbooks, they are encouraged, as they increase narrative force. By adding information, comments generate a new level of meaning. For example, if you write next to your drawing, “The stench was unbearable,” or “I love her beautiful singing voice,” these notes contain information that you can hardly transmit with “only” your drawing.

  And don’t forget that although writing is a distant relative of drawing, it is still part of the family. Every kind of writing evolved from drawing; over millennia, pictorial language evolved to written language, so it’s hardly surprising that writing and drawing go so well together. Your drawing and your handwriting spring from the same source and will meld organically. So don’t be afraid to add handwritten notes to your drawings.

  Notes don’t simply document the time and place—additional information sometimes puts your drawing in a whole new light. There is a big difference between a woman sitting on the street in the middle of the night because she feels like it and because she is forced to sell packets of tissues to survive.

  Journaling

  When you pick up a working sketchbook, you’ll notice right away the thing that may not have been so obvious when you bought it: your sketchbook is not just a book of drawings, but is also a journal. Its pages tell of many days, weeks, and months of your life. In addition to your drawings, you will discover your day-to-day life in your books, visits to foreign cities, maybe images of your girlfriend, perhaps some figures you drew during a toothache or a landscape from a picnic. In other words, a sketchbook chronicles your life. If you have added comments, ideas, place descriptions, and similar things to your drawings, looking back on them will greatly enhance your memories. Your sketchbook—or sketchbooks—will one day tell you a lot about yourself and your life.

  The purpose of a journal is always to develop yourself and your own opinions. Remember: designing is mainly a decision-making process. And in order to make a decision, you have to know where you stand. In the long run, a sketchbook will help you on this journey.

  Doodling will set you free

  “We are such stuff as dreams are made on…”

  (Prospero in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest)

  A sketchbook is not only for documenting your surroundings. It also gives you the space to chronicle your imagination.

  Create a double page of freedom now and then. Let your drawing take you away. We all are familiar with “telephone doodles.” Well, you don’t need a telephone call to doodle. Just scribble away without thinking about your subject or aim. Begin with a line, an eye, a nose, and keep working on it. Don’t be afraid of producing nonsense!

  Let your drawing take you where you didn’t plan to be. You’ll notice a sense of freedom that will also help you later on with more directed projects. Trust your imagination. It’s always surprising how clever the part of our mind is that doesn’t deliberately attempt to be clever.

  The right and wrong ways to draw

  My granny liked to comment on my early drawings by saying that you had to be able to precisely depict everything around you before you were allowed to paint however you like. “Picasso learned to draw properly before he became abstract,” she would say.

  This kind of advice was typical for my granny, who also held the opinion that you had to eat your potatoes and salad before you got dessert. Art that was fun was obviously suspicious. Fun had to be earned first through hard work.

  The techniques of drawing and sketching are sadly not at all suitable for anyone who wants to please everyone (including my granny). If you want to reproduce something “just as it is,” you can turn to photography.

  Of course, drawing can reproduce, but the strength of sketching lies in one’s own position, one’s own way of seeing. Drawings that attempt to imitate photos seem—unsurprisingly — stiff and boring.

  Adding or removing a component, drawing over or caricaturing an element, making mistakes— this is what brings a drawing to life.

  So my granny’s advice had me barking up the wrong tree. I learned to draw “better,” but it was only thanks to my enthusiasm that this advice did not drive the joy of drawing out of me completely. Drawing is a learnable skill that requires both effort and discipline. The strength of sketches, however, is their immediacy, their expression, their emotion and creativity: the fun of simply drawing. You’ll get “better” at it all by yourself.

  If it’s fun, you’ll do it more often. And if you do it more often, you’ll do it well.

  Specialty pens

  Off-the-shelf pens, like rollerball pens, felt-tip pens, and fountain pens are particularly suitable for working in sketchbooks. For one, they’re inexpensive and you can work with them rapidly and fluidly. Additionally, they don’t smear quickly or bleed through the page.

  If you use waterproof pens, you can later enhance your drawing with watercolors or, as
in this example, give them depth by using a gray felt-tip pen. If you use water-soluble pens or fountain pens, you can paint over your lines with clear water, thus creating appealing grays or color gradations.

  Tip:

  Use colored pens. Art and office supply stores have all sorts of them—often intended for use in the office or for children —that are excellent for drawing. Try some out and see what works best for you.

  Sepia ink

  Working with sepia ink was common in ancient times; it is one of the oldest materials in drawing. Medieval book illustrators used it just as modern artists do today. The brown hue, originally made from octopus ink, is excellent for drawing and coloring. Sepia ink can be used as a drawing ink as well as a glaze when diluted. When coloring with sepia ink, it’s wise to use lots of water. Also, as when working with watercolors, the white of the paper is the lightest color (see this page).

  Tip:

  Steel quills are not very good to use with ink in sketchbooks since they quickly scratch through the paper. An alternative is the reed pen.

  You can carve reed pens from thin bamboo or reeds. First, cut the bamboo at a 30-degree angle with a sharp knife. The circular shape of the bamboo will make the cut somewhat round rather than straight.

  Next, cut a slit in the long end and then sharpen the reed pen carefully. Make sure a little wood is left over on both sides of the slit.