How To Sketch: Plants & Trees

Time spent sketching can be glorious as the chatter and demands of everyday life take a temporary back seat. How to sketch trees and plants encourages readers to look afresh, providing a complete beginner' s guide to producing dynamic, spontaneous images of the natural world around us. The introduction explains the ethos of the book. It also features examples from art history of the importance of sketching from nature, as well as a potted guide to the kinds of trees and plants most commonly encountered in our day-to-day lives. The following Basics section runs through the fundamentals of sketching such as line, tone and composition. Each Basic ends with exercises (called Your Turn) in which readers are encouraged to practice for themselves what they' ve just learnt. The accompanying sketchbook provides an easy opportunity to do this. One issue with many how-to draw books is that they demonstrate only one way of drawing (i.e. that of the author). The next section, " Multiples," includes a number of different artists' responses to the same subject (a piece of fruit, a walk in the park, a tree in the garden etc). This underlines the central idea that readers can and should discover their own way(s) of working.