Freehand Sketching: An Introduction

From basic skills to sketch construction using grids, frames, and shapes to the creation of tone, texture, color, and detail, and experimentation with digital rendering, Freehand Sketching helps you build your drawing skill and confidence through mastery of fundamentals. Carefully designed exercises guide you step by step in effective sketching in the studio and in the field. Also covered are helpful topics such as useful equipment, observation skills, framing and editing sketches, rendering people, and keeping a journal.

An array of the author’s lively sketches as well as examples from other architectural professionals fill the pages of Freehand Sketching, making this an ideal handbook for architecture and design students and all who wish to be more effective at visual communication.

Even in the computer age, freehand sketching is the designer’s most useful tool for notation, design exploration, and graphic communication.

Paul Laseau is the author of numerous books on architectural drawing and rendering, most notably Graphic Thinking for Architects and Designers and Visual Notes, with Norman Crowe. He has served as coeditor of Representation: The Journal of Graphic Education. Now retired, he has thirty years of teaching experience, most recently at Ball State University.