Learn dynamic sketching and watercolor techniques for creating cityscapes, landscapes, figures and faces, still lifes, and more, enhancing the story you want to tell with form, line, and color.

Discover incredible methods and tips for creating dramatic street scenes and vivid landscapes, and capturing dynamic figures and graphic architectural details. Artist Alex Hillkurtz — a top Hollywood storyboard artist, international workshop instructor, and Signature Member of the National Watercolor Society — presents fundamental concepts of sketching with pencil and pen for a number of popular genres. Discover simple ways to jot down spontaneous ideas in pencil, capture rough details in ink, and add watercolor for extra depth and interest.

Make sketching more enjoyable by adopting innovative techniques that will make a difference in your practice, and your artwork. No matter your experience or skill level, you’ll benefit from learning:

- Compositions that draw the eye
- How to avoid common sketching mistakes
- Ways to create light and shadow to define shapes and add interest
- Successful ways to use negative space
- The importance of perspective in creating depth
- Easy color washes that create drama

Get started today, and fill your sketchbooks with unique drawings and paintings you will be proud of.

The For Artists series expertly guides and instructs artists at all skill levels who want to develop their classical drawing and painting skills and create realistic and representational art.

About the Author:

Alex Hillkurtz was born in England and grew up in California, where he works as a renowned storyboard artist for feature films, television, and commercials. His film credits include Argo, Almost Famous, It’s Complicated, Vanilla Sky, and many others. He uses the language of cinema to inform his images, moving beyond what one sees, and depicting what he wants others to see.

Alex has taught sketching, plein air, and watercolor workshops in Germany, Russia, Italy, the Netherlands, France, the UK, and the US. His artwork, which has earned him Signature status in the National Watercolor Society as a Master artist, has been exhibited at L'Entrée des Artistes in Paris, Matite en Viaggio in Venice, and MiArs in Milan. He believes that in our too-crowded lives, sketching and plein air painting invite us to move at a more deliberate pace to discover a true sense of place, and in the process, unexpected stories are revealed. Alex currently lives in Paris with his film editor wife, Tiffany, and enjoys discovering the hidden corners of the city that sketching and plein air painting allow.

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Пролистать книгу Sketching Techniques for Artists: In-Studio and Plein-Air Methods for Drawing and Painting Still Lifes, Landscapes, Architecture, Faces and Figures, and More на Google Books

The Landscape Painter’s Workbook is the definitive hands-on guide to the time-honored techniques and essential elements of landscape painting.

Written by celebrated landscape artist, instructor, and author Mitchell Albala, this richly informative and beautifully illustrated volume leads you step by step through his approach to the genre, from establishing a composition using basic shapes to applying time-tested color strategies, with all-new lessons, practical exercises, and special topics, including:

- The Complete Color Strategy. What are the three aspects of color contrast that guide a painting’s strategy?
- Notan. Explore this special type of compositional study, which identifies the underlying shapes and patterns of a composition.
- Picture Formats. How does the picture format — horizontal, vertical, or square — affect the composition? What are the pros and cons of each?
- Color Grouping. A full chapter details this special practice, which helps maintain harmony by organizing colors into a limited number of groups.
- Composition. An in-depth review of variation, movement, and active negative space, with illustrations that diagram the action in each example.
- Workshop Exercises. Instead of demonstrations that show how the author paints, The Landscape Painter’s Workbook includes 10 skill-building workshop exercises to help you work through essential lessons on your own.

With examples of work by 45 contemporary landscape painters — more than 80 paintings in all — ​in oil, acrylic, pastel, and watercolor, the lessons are suitable for all mediums. Each painting is thoroughly analyzed in terms of shape, composition, or color, with supporting diagrams, thumbnails, and photographs.

The Landscape Painter’s Workbook inspires and informs all artists, from aspiring to accomplished, on how to successfully portray the majesty and subtlety of the natural world.

The For Artists series expertly guides and instructs artists at all skill levels who want to develop their classical drawing and painting skills and create realistic and representational art.

About the Author:

Mitchell Albala, whose semi-abstract and atmospheric landscapes have been exhibited nationally, is the author of two books: The Landscape Painter’s Workbook: Essential Studies in Shape, Composition, and Color (Rockport Publishers) and Landscape Painting: Essential Concepts and Techniques for Plein Air and Studio Practice (Watson-Guptill), a leading title on the subject since it was published in 2009. In addition to leading plein air workshops in Italy, Albala is also a popular workshop instructor in the Pacific Northwest and has lectured on Impressionism and landscape painting at the Seattle Art Museum. He has written for International Artist and Artists & Illustrators magazines, and his work was profiled in the French Arts magazine Practique des Arts. His popular painting blog holds a top spot on feedspot.com’s “Top 80 Websites & Blogs for Painters.” His paintings, workshops, and blog can be found on his website mitchalbala.com. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

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Пролистать книгу The Landscape Painter's Workbook: Essential Studies in Shape, Composition, and Color на Google Books