Art book reviews

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so

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so hi there

uh this is just a short video uh to

introduce you to

my website where i also do uh

art book art and photography book

reviews so the art books can range from

your sort of coffee table books

to

instructional

um

and

anything that covers art but my focus

tends to be um

urban sketching and things like that so

i've got

two books

that i can recommend

for that this one is

urban drawing by phil dean

and

i follow him on

uh

on instagram and i'll leave

his uh instagram handle at the bottom

description

this book just goes through

what he takes

in his travel gear

and

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how each um

can have different results through like

a fountain pen charcoal

brush pens

fine liners

and what have you

and

just

kind of guiding you through there some

of this

some people are kind of afraid of

sketching in public and they don't know

if they're allowed to

what if someone comes up and talks to

you um there's a little bit of

guidance on that as well and also

loosening up

there's something i'm

constantly trying to do

i'm always

happier with the result when i do

and just little five minute sketches

ideas

contour drawing which is a really good

one

for people learning

and

how to build up that scene that you have

how to measure out

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proportions and things like that for

buildings

that's how you

measure for length

and

it's just a really good

book to get you started

so it goes into more complex details

uh

adding people in which really helps

give scale to your your drawings

again a lot of people

don't feel they have the skills for

drawing people and also they don't want

to be caught drawing people but

it really

it's not a big deal it's um especially

if you start off with contour drawing

and just get those gestures down

um people may move in and out of a scene

you'll take

um one person's jacket but use somebody

else's pants like there's always someone

coming along who can fill in the rest of

the detail for you

and then just adding color

at the end

so i highly recommend that uh there's a

few again on my website

this one i haven't had much

uh time to really go into depth about

i just got it last week

so it a review of it will be up

shortly on my site

it's another

urban sketching

like look at that

that's just wonderful

and it's you know you're not

really worrying about you know getting

people just exactly so it's you capture

the movement and that's

what i like about

a lot of the

examples in this

in this book

a lot of them are london based but

toronto actually caught crops up in a

couple of them

and it's just thinking about different

ways to

capture things like from these

very loose lines adding washes

to this like this just

full

full of mark making

so i'm gonna have a proper look at that

and i will

then put it up on my

on my website

now i also

i don't buy

every book

um if i see

something in a magazine about

new books out or book recommendations

sometimes i will try my local library

and that is toronto public library

now

i'm very fortunate because toronto

public library is the largest

uh library system so there's usually

loads of copies they usually get

a good range of new books every year

so if you see a book recommended it's

quite likely that you'll be able to get

it

and this is one that anyone who's doing

um

sketching or landscapes catching will

love this this is david hockney's book

and it's your yorkshire sketchbook

i think it's 2012

that he was residing in new york sure

and

this is just exact reproduction

of

his sketchbook

and very loose again

just using a sort of monotone there's a

little bit green here but it's mostly

just

our monochrome

look for these

again it's just his interpretation

of the scene before him

a lot of it

about mark making

adding to the scene as a whole

like look at that

group of trees

you're not

he's not concentrating on getting exact

uh

representation of these trees it's

really about the feeling about the

composition

there's a lot of

more monochrome but then there's also

these with more color and if you know

david hockney's work

um his paintings and artwork are usually

very colorful

but a lot of times you don't need that

especially your sketchbook should be

your

experimentation place

um working things out

maybe

doing a pre-sketch for a work that

you'll later do in the studio or not

like just

make it about i tend to use mine

to make it about my journey

in the city

so i really recommend

seeing other artists sketch books

to make you feel like you don't have to

be so precious

about yours

and look that's just sitting in a car

park

at

maybe a supermarket or

some big box store

sometimes things don't work out and

that's okay

like

oh my goodness a blank page that's okay

and that's

that little book

again i'll have down below i'll um

list all the books that i've shown but

i'll also

have a link to my website where i have

my book reviews

now there's two

books for

um

general sort of exploring media

um

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tools uh

different approaches to things

and

i got this book

out the library to begin with but then i

liked it so much

that i went back or i went and

ordered it for myself

because it's a good

lays out all the different types of

things

there's sculpture um

digital media in this book it's not just

the traditional

paint

again

with painting you have

description of airbrushing and spray

paint

non-traditional art paints

and then just

focus on pens

pastels

uh printmaking

it's ontalio

which i have done

and i would love to do again it's just

having access to press but there's other

ways around it there's other things that

you can do like

uh lineup cuts

that you can hand print

lithography i could never get into i did

have a course on that but i just

couldn't

get into that

and there's filming

so it's a really great

um

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capture of all the different types of

media that you could be working in

and

the different tools

that you would um

work with like your software choices for

uh

digital

photoshop there's grayson perry himself

and

speaking of grayson perry i have some

book reviews for his books

on my website too

so that's just a

nice little book it wasn't too expensive

i think i got it for less than 40. uh in

a similar vein but just focusing on

painting is

this dk um

artists

painting techniques they have different

ones there's one for watercolor i

believe

now if anyone uh remembers the

was it darling kinserly

the um

travel guides that they used to put out

were so full of detail like you would

have

um before google earth or anything like

that you would have

uh schematic drawings of inside museums

and everything and i just loved

those books

when i was a kid

uh this one

goes into the same amount of detail

uh

how to work outdoors choosing your

subject choosing medium

different color theory

and

warm and cool colors together brushes

palette

knives the list goes on and how to build

up to a final

a final painting too

how to capture mood

um they dissect

an artwork

for each chapter

gives you really good

tips

and it's just

a visually beautiful

book even if you weren't really into

most of the media in here

and it does go

through a lot of different media and

mixing them

um

how to create a focal point

you can see where my

my bookmarks end up

um

for oil painting uh explaining the fat

over lean

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uh how you're supposed to build up uh an

oil painting

so if you're just starting out or even

if you're not like i bought this and

i've

you know been studying art for a very

very long time

um i still found some really good tips

especially for things that

i'm going into i never really did oil

painting in

in school so

i

really enjoy

different

things to think about when it comes to

mark making for that and how to build up

an oil

and that's

that one

and then

um if any of you

get a magazine artist in illustrator

jake spicer has been a contributor to

that magazine he does usually a series

focusing on something i think right now

it's on pastel drawing

and um

they'll take you month by month

examining

the subject

these are his

he has other books but i got the figure

drawing

pretty

weighty and the you will be able to draw

faces by the end of this book

and this one comes with a

or at least it did i'm not sure where

the there's a

book strap here for that

one and this is great has room for you

to practice

it exams

different aspects of the head including

neck and shoulders which sometimes get

forgotten about

um

the different angles

that you might have to capture more

practice area

little

quick exercises

and it has at the beginning of you know

breakdown

of

what it features but also

how long you have so

this page is for quick warm-up ideas

this one is for doing 15 minutes

and this one is for doing longer studies

so again this is a really great book

on

studying the

human face

in all aspects like

the nose eyes

uh

things that could be on the nose on the

ears

like jewelry hair age

expressions

it's a really good book for that

and then the figure drawing which i plan

to do more of

uh

now that

things are a little bit better not

completely better when it comes to covet

but

there are um

life model drawing groups

open back up

this will go through the different tools

that you might want to

use

for doing the human form

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how to set it up see it as like a

sculptural

form and then start to slowly in add

the details of shadowing

and then there's

a work an

artwork looked at by different artists

throughout

that light and shadow

how to draw that light in

get another artist kathy kovitz

and her very powerful

portrait set she did

just seeing it um

thinking about contour lines

cross contour lines

to slowly build up your

your figure

so that's all that i'm gonna do here um

like i said there's one place that i

have

all of my book reviews and that is on my

website and you'll see that

below in the description so thanks very

much everybody

and i hope you get out there

painting and sketching now the weather

is better

at least in this

northern hemisphere

and

enjoy the spring

thanks very much bye

you