Book recommendation: 5-Minute Sketching – Architecture: Super-Quick Techniques for Amazing Drawings by Liz Steel

5-Minute Sketching – Architecture: Super-Quick Techniques for Amazing Drawings by Liz Steel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have been reading a lot of books about sketching and drawing recently. I have been looking more for inspiration than for technique, and for this purpose this book is very good. On the other hand, even though there are a few pages on perspective, the content is insufficient to really nail the technique and train the eye and I wouldn’t recomend it to anyone trying to learn perspective or how to start a sketch from scratch if they have never done it before.

The tips for simplifying the sketch are great and I will definiteky try some of them, but looking at the examples featured in the book, it seems to me that plenty of them would take more than 5-minutes to draw. There are also several repeated tips, but as these are frequently related to different media, which is always interesting to test, I enjoyed Steel’s approach.

I know the author uses more frequently watercolour – as most urban sketchers do – but I am a fan of markers and, unfortunately, there are only a couple of pages on techniques using those. I am after recommendations of marker-based sketch publications by the way, if you know some please send them my way!

Finally, this book features plenty of examples (great for inspiration) and the presentation is beautiful with great paper and beautiful cover. A joy to read.

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