With Drawing: Landscapes, learn to render a variety of beautiful landscape subjects in graphite pencil.
William F. Powell invites you into his artistic world to explore a number of basic drawing techniques and shows how to develop a drawing to its fullest through a series of step-by-step demonstrations. In this 10.25 × 13.75–inch book, Powell explains a number of drawing techniques and special effects and gives tips on how to design a well-balanced composition.
Landscapes provides you with the necessary knowledge to create your own landscape drawings from preliminary sketch to the completed work. Discover different methods of shading, ways of manipulating drawing tools to produce specific textures, and a wealth of beautiful landscapes to both copy and admire, includes scenes from American national parks.
Also included are simple techniques for developing common landscape elements—such as trees, clouds, rocks, and water—and how to apply a variety of methods to convey a sense of realism. Then, with a little practice, you will be able to apply your newfound skills and draw your own beautiful landscape masterpieces!
Designed for beginners, the How to Draw & Paint series offers easy-to-follow guides that introduce artists to basic tools and materials and include simple step-by-step lessons for a variety of projects suitable for the aspiring artist. Drawing: Landscapes allows artists to develop drawing skills by demonstrating how to start with basic shapes and use pencil and shading techniques to create varied textures, values, and details for a realistic, completed landscape drawing.
Drawing Landscapes with William F. Powell is a new title in the Learn to Draw Step by Step series. Due out 3rd March 2020 from Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint, it's 40 pages and available in paperback format. This appears to be a reformat and re-release of material first released in 1997 with the same title by the same author.
The titles in this series are all formatted in a similar manner and this one is no exception.
A short general introduction (10%) covers tools and materials including pencils, paper, blending tools, etc. The intro is followed by a group of non-specific tutorials on graphite techniques, shading, light, shapes and perspective. The following tutorial chapters are specific for different subjects (landscapes) and include specific tutorials: clouds, rocks, trees & branches, etc, leading to some full studies. There is also a very abbreviated tutorial on rendering some surfaces and finishes. It should be noted that the style of these renderings is very retro/traditional in a style which was popular in the early to mid 20th century, much of that popularity springing from the art of Mr. Powell himself.
I like these tutorial booklets, they're inexpensive and full of useful info for artists looking for improvement in their own work. It's nice to see them getting a re-release for a new audience of artists and learners.
Four stars - for what it covers and for a very short tutorial guide, it does the job admirably well.
Disclosure: I received an eARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
