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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Through drawing, you experience things differently.
A drawing creates the memory of actually being there.
Pay attention to the specific shapes of your subjects. Study their individual aspects. Shapes and textures can be seen in trees, symmetries in flowers.
When preparing for a drawing expedition outdoors, don’t forget sunscreen, insect repellent (ticks!), and perhaps a raincoat—not to mention the picnic basket!
travel cartoon and include the factor of time in your drawing.
Watercolor paints are perfect for coloring landscape sketches.
color harmonies of a landscape are essential for its atmosphere, and can be captured rapidly and confidently with watercolors.
Try to include a living creature in your landscapes. Draw a bird or a cat (it will show up on its own somewhere…). Life breaks the stasis of your drawing.
In place of ink you can also use iodine from your first-aid kit.
Shadow is nothing more than the absence of light.
shadow is the default, the original state.
shadows define space.
Hatching also enables us to convey textures and surface properties.
Be considerate. Draw, but work discreetly!
People notice when they are being watched. It’s a magical thing—though in some cases, also dangerous. Do not stare at your subjects too long. Look in a different direction now and then and act as if you are interested in something else entirely. Wear sunglasses!
The great art of caricature is to exaggerate a feature to portray a person.
Don’t be too analytical; try to ascertain intuitively what defines the person.
One good technique for achieving this is blind contour drawing. It shortens the pathway from the eye to the hand,
Pay attention to the eyes and mouth. They are more recognizable features than the noses. Caricatures with big noses do not work because of the nose, but in spite of it.
In the end it will be like everything else that you learn. If it’s fun, you’ll do it more often. If you do it often, you’ll do it well.
Work quickly while your subject is sitting still and always begin with the most important thing: the pose. You can always add the texture of the fur long after the animal has disappeared back into its den.
related to a yearning for better days, for mystery, and an escape from the oh-so-dull everyday.
Don’t forget that you’re just sketching the building—not constructing it. So don’t meticulously count every window; you can polish up the details once you’ve basically captured the overall shape.
Perhaps it won’t exactly capture the way it looks objectively—that’s a job for photography—but the way it looks to you. That’s what counts.
You have to adjust yourself to places, for good or for bad. The rule for journeying artists: don’t go to dangerous places indiscriminately and don’t go to unsafe places unprepared.
When drawing, we lug boxes full of travel sketches, drafts, and illustrations by earlier generations of painters around with us—romanticized pictures, most of which were made before the advent of the automobile.
Today, though, places look different. So don’t trust the drawings of earlier generations; trust your own eyes. Draw the cars. Draw the billboards, the air conditioners, the traffic signs…draw your era!
Old pictures describe old times. Describe your own!
We may not always be mindful of it, but the present that we capture today will very soon be surprisingly long ago. That is a good reason to capture it (and its cars) faithfully.
objects are usually only interesting in reference to us.
imaginable. An object needs an author, a creator, as much as someone who uses the object.
For instance, you can capture the abstract term “loneliness” by portraying an object, simply because the object by itself— say, a tipped-over ...
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As artists, this means that we not only illustrate objects, but can also tell stories with them. This is where...
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it’s always better beyond the blue ridge of hills on the horizon than it is here.
“all of life is a journey.”
Sketchbooks are primarily travel books. They are journals and books of hours, in which we do not work in our usual surroundings, but reflect on what is outside, what is foreign.
One good trick is to draw different subjects on either side of a double-page spread. For instance, draw a street scene on the right-hand
hand page and figures on the left. Use a loose sheet as a cover and slide it over the page with the figures if anyone takes a look.
Museums usually prohibit photography but permit drawing. In most museums, it is the flash that is forbidden because it could damage the exhibits. You won’t need that for drawing.
Draw from high above.
For urban panoramas, always start with a large building in the foreground and use it to gauge the sizes of the surrounding buildings. Shut one eye and measure
If it is important to you to portray the tiniest details of your subject, then you ought to make an effort to be precise.
to illustrate a frame of mind or a movement, you will probably do better to draw with more expression.
No one is keeping you from mixing different perspectives in one drawing. For example, try painting everything that moves abstractly, and everything standing still realistically. You’ll be amazed at the results.
A sketch is not merely an illustration of reality. A sketch is a piece of time.
The special thing about a sketch is that it captures time. A drawing not only illustrates, it also documents its own genesis.
Even if your drawing is not perfect, it is a genuine piece of time that will never be repeated.
In other words, don’t hesitate to further develop your sketches on the computer. The results will profit from the mix!
the sketchbook still remains something intimate and personal. It remains a field of experimentation and of trial and error. It remains a notebook and a diary.
And yet, the most important of them all is your own sketchbook, and the sketchbooks to come— the sketchbook you will begin next!
