The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature, Revised Edition

by Cathy Johnson

Overview

Featuring simple step-by-step instructions and hundreds of illustrations, this sketching and watercolor primer reveals how creating art can enhance any outdoor experience.

In this inspirational guide, Cathy Johnson, a nationally recognized artist, naturalist and teacher, offers personal anecdotes, exercises and useful tips that are perfect for every amateur artist. This book covers a wide range of subjects, including:

Tools and equipment

Mixing paints and washes

Selecting a subject to sketch or paint

Capturing the illusion of light

Sketching clouds, flowers, trees, plants and animals

Using field sketches as studies for future paintings

Understanding color and using a color wheel

A source list for art supplies

With more than 280 of Johnson’s own illustrations—both in color and black and white—this book will inspire you to appreciate every detail of the natural world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635615661
Publisher:	Echo Point Books & Media
Publication date:	05/31/2018
Edition description:	Reprint ed.
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.66(d)

About the Author

Cathy Johnson has worked as a naturalist, writer, and freelance artist for the past 40 years, and was staff naturalist and contributing editor for Country Living magazine for 11 years. She has been a contributing editor to Artist's Magazine and Watercolor Artist, and authored a regular column in Personal Journaling, where she wrote on the importance of creativity in our lives. Her writing and artwork have been included in a number of nature anthologies and art books. She has written and illustrated many books, and contributed to a number of others, working with a variety of national publishing houses. In 1993, she founded her own small publishing company, Graphics/Fine Arts Press, which primarily offers books of interest to the reenacting community or others interested in history and material culture. She has been a longtime member of the Author's Guild. She was chosen Conservation Communicator of the Year by the Burroughs Audubon Society in l987, and won the Thorpe Menn Award for Creative Writing (AAUW) for The Naturalist's Cabin: Constructing the Dream (Viking Penguin) in 1992. Cathy teaches a number of self-directed mini-classes on her website, http://cathyjohnson.info. She also offers a number of free tutorial videos on YouTube; visit https://www.youtube.com/user/KateJosTube.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

ONE Tools and Equipment

TWO Getting Started

THREE Putting the Basics to Work

FOUR Capturing the Illusion of Light

FIVE Field Sketching

SIX Sketching in Color

SEVEN Watercolor as a Sketching Medium—and Beyond

EIGHT The Landscape

NINE Plants and Flowers T

TEN Trees

ELEVEN Sketching in the Animal Kingdom

TWELVE Sketching as a Means to an End

WHERE TO BUY ART SUPPLIES

WORKSHOPS AND SKETCHING OPPORTUNITIES

BIBLIOGRAPHY