Freehand Drawing and Discovery: Urban Sketching and Concept Drawing for Designers

I has stumbled upon James Richards on Skillshare and really liked his style. Simple, effective and his ability to take complex scenes and turn them into awesome sketches really appealed to me. The book is expensive and it took me while too decide on the purchase. My reasoning was (a) I liked his approach, (b) I liked his credentials (he is a professional landscape architect, and (c) the book comes with a code that gives you access to video tutorials. So I purchased and have not regretted it for one moment. He explains things in a structured and detailed fashion (and the videos compliment them). Lots of examples and reference photos to really show you how a simple (read "somewhat boring") street scene can be turned into an vibrant colorful and super interesting sketch/painting. With steps on each phase along the process. If you are into Urban Sketching (or landscape architecture) this book will not disappoint. Very highly recommended.

While I haven't finished the whole book (I'm waiting to read the last section, which is about presentation graphics), I want to give this book a big thumbs up. I'm a landscape arch student and I'm not the most confident with freehand drawing. I always find myself saying 'someone here knows how to make this easier and they just aren't telling me.' Well someone does know and he wrote a great book about it. Just about everything you want to know is in this book. I filled the margins with notes, tips, and tricks Richards discusses in the book that have already helped me and inspired me to be a less anxious sketcher. He's an urban sketcher and it shows, but the style he uses in the book is certainly appropriate for designers as well. I found myself sketching dozens of pages of people and cars because he makes it so easy to figure out the proportions and level of appropriate detail. Those are the two things I was most anxious about. I recommend this book if you need some inspiration, some cheerleading, or someone to tell you exactly how to develop your own style of freehand drawing.

I LOVE this book! The artwork in it, the advice and lessons, everything in this book is a joy to read and put into use! How I wish I could actually take a class from Mr. Richards! I plan to use the links provided in the book to learn even more! I shared this beautiful book with one of my students who is interested in studying architecture after graduating high school and he wants a copy of this book too! So inspiring! Don't hesitate to buy this! I bought it to improve my field sketches I want to do of sites throughout my city (Omaha) and I am thrilled at all that I have already learned to put into use! Don't hesitate to buy this book!

I am constantly on the lookout for drawing books that talk about technique and the author's own unique manner of developing his or her craft. This book is wonderful and fits both of those qualifications. I mean simple stuff like "Draw small." Brilliant. I wouldn't have thought of that. It's not in the detail, like drawing every leaf on a tree or every window in a building, but in the overall finished product. James Richards' drawings are fantastic and in some cases, the suggestion of color is just enough to make the work come alive. I thoroughly enjoyed the book from cover to cover and will use it for an invaluable reference aid with my own sketches.

Good book….A bit aged in 2025 but still an informative & good book!

This book teaches you how to simplify complex scenes into manageable drawings. If you have ever tried to draw from life or even from a landscape photograph you know your first problem is the complexity of the visual information, it is hard to know where to start and what to include. I will share a good experience I had with this book that I think shows how this book can help you get started and make your way through sketch of a complex subject. I bought the book some months ago and read it with enjoyment on the Kindle app on my ipad. One new thought that stayed with me is that all the human figures in a drawing have their eye level on the horizon line. I understood the idea but didn't really believe real life worked that way, it seemed too good to be true. Recently I was on the beach in Florida, the beach is one of the few places you get an unobstructed view of the actual horizon, and sure enough, I could see that the people in front of me had their eye level on the horizon line, no matter how far they were from my observation point. Experimenting with the horizon line in photos inspired me to look up this subject in Richards' text (a benefit of having the ebook-it is with me when I travel). I read the relevant sections in Richards and then proceeded to use his method to draw an ink and water-color pencil sketch of his Fig. 2.30, which is a photo of a cathedral, a pretty challenging subject, which has a lot of people at various distances in the foreground. The text has images of several stages of the development of his drawing of the scene, which are helpful to understand his procedure. In about 3 hours I had an ink and watercolor pencil sketch I was happy with (no doubt Richards could do this in about 20 minutes). [Hey Amazon! If we could upload images to reviews I could post my sketch here!] More importantly, the horizon line idea was really making sense to me and Richards' method for sketching had prove its usefulness for getting a nice sketch of a complicated city landscape. By the way, this is one book where the potential of the ebook format is realized. Most of the photos and drawings will enlarge to full screen if you double click on them, and you can pinch and zoom-invaluable for sketching from the photos in the book. I've noticed many print art books have the reference photo too small for you to do your own work from them. The video links are really helpful as well. And Richards has a nice encouraging writing style that gives you confidence as you try to follow his suggestions. Overall highly recommended.

If you are a beginner and want to start drawing, I recommend this book because you will be provided a secure path to follow. His nine keys to Exploratory Drawing will encourage you to face the white sheet of paper. If you want to improve your skills, James' expertise in teaching will open new ways for you to express yourself. The tutorial videos will enable you to add value and consistency to your interpretation of any scene that you witness. If you are a master, you will enjoy the way James explores some subjects with a combination of knowledge, proven skills and capacity to make good use of some available technologies to improve your final product that can be a simple drawing or an elaborate architectural project. The hardcover of this book is another feature that is 100% in accordance with the high value of its content.

I love this book! James Richards has created a drawing guide that is so joyful, exuberant and empowering that anyone who draws or anyone who wishes to draw should add this to their permanent library. This book transcends the mere how-to and reaches right to the core of why we draw and how we create. Both the text and the illustrations offer powerful insights into the creative process. I love how each page of text offers a core idea that is highlighted and reinforced by the lay-out and how is page is simply beautiful to look at. This book offers some of the clearest and most straightforward explanations of technique that I have ever come across. It makes an important point, that in this rapidly changing world, it is not the tool, but the artist's vision that matters. Vignettes by fellow sketchers offer additional insight into the creative process, while the final section offers a philosophy and a way of thinking about the relationship between hand drawing and digitalization that clearly shows the synergy between these different methods of expression. This book is a must have for anyone seeking to understand and refine their own creative process.