Urban Sketching: Capturing the Views Around Us

By Joe Larano Jr.

Urban Sketching: Capturing the Views around Us offers the readers with wealth of information on becoming successful urban sketchers and at the same time gives them the encouragement and opportunities to experience the joy and fun of urban sketching.
The book gives an overview on various artist tools and materials that urban sketchers will have to familiarize themselves with, aiming to develop and enhance their sketching skills. Readers, novice sketchers, and urban sketchers of various skill levels will find this book as an information source on topics such as line quality, tonal values, perspectives, shades, and shadows, including other elements of art as applied to urban sketching.
Readers will find good information in the opening chapter on how urban sketching as an art movement is gaining popularity around the world through the Internet and various social media platforms. The section also highlights information on how urban sketching as a form of hobby is encouraging housewives, students, youths, and ordinary people into becoming urban sketchers themselves.
The inclusion of important basic art principles in one chapter will greatly benefit readers, beginners and urban sketchers alike, with ideas and knowledge on how certain objects are being drawn with the intention of gaining unique and personal sketching style. The author’s sketching style and techniques using various media will encourage readers to explore the use of other media. Sketches from other international urban sketchers, with their unique and notable sketching styles, are featured in this book to provide readers and sketchers with an array of great and interesting sketches from which to learn and appreciate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984580016

Joe Larano Jr.

Joe Larano Jr. is a registered architect in the province of British Columbia in Canada. Aside from being a design professional he is also an artist passionate in graphics design, painting, computer 3D modeling, animation and rendering. When Urban Sketching became a worldwide phenomenon, Joe has been in the forefront of Urban Sketching, participating in sketch crawls, indoor and outdoor sketching. He conducts local workshops and has held several demonstration sketching in his locality. He loves to interact with fellow Urban Sketchers and appreciates their sketching works as he admits it as " a one way of improving and enhancing one's sketching skills". The mountains and seas and the plethora of rugged landscapes in the beautiful British Columbia provides colorful and magnificent composition for Joe's Urban Sketching subjects. Joe admits the resurgence of Urban Sketching movement has widely impacted his life. It is for this reason that he became an active Urban Sketcher and pursue the writing of this book.

Book preview

URBAN SKETCHING:

CAPTURING THE VIEWS AROUND US

JOE LARANO JR.

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Copyright © 2020 by Joe Larano Jr. 810869

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

Library of Congress Control Number:   2020909765

Rev. date: 07/14/2020

to my dear wife Candie and my sons Jarvin, Jeg Leon and Jaihan

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Foreword

Having studied architecture, both BA and MA, during my youth in the USA before the digital revolution, we drew by hand. When I think of it, the subject of my studies may have been architecture, but the craft I mastered was drawing by hand. Then decades later, I realized that the ancient art of freehand drawing had gotten lost in the education of architects, and generations of students would not know how to draw by hand to observe, analyze, and understand.

I have developed my course, Principles of Freehand Sketching Architecture and Interiors, and for the last ten years have taught it online, in short courses, and in universities around the globe. My approach to drawing from observation is to break down what I see to understand the original thoughts of its creator—drawing the basic forms, the hidden geometry, and the relationship of the elements in the buildings.

Mr. Joe Larano showed up on my Instagram search for like-minded artists in 2017, and I have enjoyed his work tremendously since then. His work shows me that, around the globe, we urban sketchers are sitting on our foldable chairs or benches or perching on any place, creating that peaceful space to observe and draw. Both of us love urban sketching and drawing our surroundings to engage and appreciate. I love Mr. Larano’s use of bold colors and expressive lines, different from my approach but both of us adding to the rich global community of urban sketchers in our unique ways.

This book shows the many ways and approaches there are to urban sketching, both the more technical approach of lines and the more emotional qualities watercolors give. This book expresses the enjoyment and engagement urban sketchers have with their built environment. This also brings inspiration outside the world of architecture that readers could apply.

Hopefully, it will encourage more people to grab a drawing pad and get going, find themselves a comfortable place to sit and then just disappear into the moment, and see how the image slowly comes to life on the paper. And unlike photographs, each urban sketcher can focus on the aspects they like. We may all be looking at the same scene, but each one of us sees something different. Each drawing is unique and brings more awareness to our cities and enriches our lives with its multiple viewpoints.

Illugi Eysteinsson

Reykjavík, Iceland, 2020

Illugi Eysteinsson

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Acknowledgments

The production of this book, Urban Sketching: Capturing the Views Around Us, will not be complete without the help and efforts of several dedicated people. I am taking this opportunity to thank and acknowledge the assistance they have given me during various phases of this book project.

First, I am grateful to my family—my wife, Candie, and three boys, Jarvin, Leon, and Jaihan—who had always encouraged me to push through with the publication of this book. I have to admit that there were so many times I felt so discouraged in pursuing this project, but they served as the driving force and inspiration that moved me forward to complete this endeavor.

I have to give thanks to the leadership of the United Architects of the Philippines–British Columbia (UAP–BC) for promoting this book in their general membership meetings. Special appreciation goes to Erich Pablo, Guel Climacosa, Tonio Tiangco, Henry Maramo, and Japheth Bondoc—my regular buddies in countless over a cup of coffee sessions at a local coffeehouse—for giving feedback and critique on the initial manuscript of this book. I’m indebted to Mr. Illugi Eysteinsson, an architect and an Instagram friend from Iceland, for giving out his choicest words in the foreword. Thanks as well to Ms. Cristina Sumera-Miraflor, architecture faculty member at Mapua University in Manila, for her encouraging piece in the introduction.

Thanks and gratitude to my associates at Vancouver Urban Sketchers Group and my urban sketching peers around the world who are more than willing to share and contribute their works in this book. I believe many sketchers and artists worldwide will be inspired with your sketching abilities and styles.

I am indebted to the editorial staff of Xlibris Publishing for their invaluable effort in the general editing of this book. To Ms. Faye Peters, publishing consultant, your precious advice from conceptualization up to finalization and production of this project has been very positive and has helped me overcome several barriers along the way. My gratitude goes as well to Ms. Dez Suarez for seeing to it that my submission materials are in order and complete.

Last, I am thanking Urban Sketchers and the artists in our global community whose creative works and enthusiasm on this form of art have generated unity and understanding among the growing communities of urban sketchers around the world. Your dedication in promoting urban sketching has led me to pursue the writing of Urban Sketching: Capturing the Views Around Us.

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Introduction

As architecture students, we were often tasked to do sketching. I remember vividly those days when we would sit on the pavement for hours and do some quick sketches of the trees and walls across our school. We would not feel it was a task as we simply enjoyed those