Freehand Drawing and Discovery: Urban Sketching and Concept Drawing for Designers

Foreword

In the village of Oia, Santorini, Greece.

I first met Jim Richards in the summer of 2011 in Lisbon, at the Second International Urban Sketching Symposium sponsored by the Urban Sketchers group. Before then, I had already been acquainted with and admired from afar his beautifully rendered drawings, his sure hand, and his skillful eye for composition and detail. But, as is so often the case, physical artifacts become much more real when you meet their maker. Not only did Jim’s drawings become more alive in Lisbon but also now, I can hear him speaking in this introduction to freehand drawing.

Street furnishings.

Drawing, like the ancient Roman god Janus, has two faces. One looks to the past, at what already exists, when we draw on location from direct observation. Even though we are in the moment, as soon as we turn our gaze from the subject to the blank page or to the drawing in progress, we have to rely on our visual memory of what we have seen. In drawing on location, we do not have to restrict ourselves to the perspective views typified by travel postcards, although these are the most tempting to replicate. In lieu of recording the optical images before us, we can use the drawing process to gain understanding, insight, and perhaps even inspiration.

The other face ...