Customer Reviews

Rendering with Markers: Definitive Techniques for Designers, Illustrators and Architects

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book effictively describes various ways and methods of using markers for illustration, and designing purposes (although mainly targeted toward designers, this shouldn't discourage you if you're an illustrator). A sampling of what you'll learn...

Materials, from the markers you should choose to the various kinds of papers available and how they affact your drawing. Application of markers, controling markers, and effective ways to represent shading and depth for oyur needs. Defining materials with marker: Chrome, Plastic, Glass, Leather, Vegetation, etc... the drawings are very nice. There is much more you'll learn through the pages of this book, these are just some of the highlights.

Unfortunately, I had to give it 4 stars instead of 5 due to the fact that it is rather outdated matieral-wise (markers have changed since 1983), and it is mainly targeted toward designers (this book would recieve 5 stars for the aspiring designer!). BUT, I learned a great deal from this book even as an illustrator / cartoonist, and it is very easy to incorporate what you learn from this book into illustration purposes like cartooning or figure drawing. I'd highly recommend this book for those who are looking to improve in markers, which admitily give your drawings a look that paint or colored pencils alone cannot achive.

A wonderful book that includes great techinque and design. It would have been nice to view more colored images. Over half of the examples are in black and white. This feature was a slight dissapointment when I first open the book.

I think this book is wonderful for anyone trying to learn rendering techniques. Even though the book is a little dated, it still communicates the principals of marker renderings. It's starts with an overview of the key factors to keep in mind when using markers: controlling the view, defining form, enhancing light, defining the main characteristics of materials and enhancing the surface. Then it goes into each of these factors explaining each of them with various examples. It also compares some of the most commonly used papers: Vellum, Bond, Marker paper, blueprint to show their marker absorption rate, degree of translucency and how the same rendering looks on each of them. It covers basic marker techniques, scrub coat technique, wet blending, masking and editing techniques, bringing forms out of backgrounds. It also touches on pastels, but only slightly. As a product designer I think this boos is a must have for a beginner. But it's also a very good reference book for experienced designers looking nostalgic for good old marker techniques.

As digital imagining becomes more and more prolific, marker rendering seems to be a dying art. Thats a shame because it can be a beautiful tool for artists of all types. This book is a valuable reference tool for artists but the techniques are somewhat outdated, which is understandable seeing that the book was written in the early 80's. Another complaint is the lack of color pictures. This is a marker book! Give us color pictures! For the price it is a good deal and one of the few books on the subject but I would seek other publications to supplement this book.

Back in the day, ad agencies, design firms and sign shops hired young artists to prepare "comps" or comprehensive layouts with Pilot Razor point pens and Magic Markers. Some illustrators even specialized in free-lancing these kinds of drawings, the best of which were genuine works of art. Since the advent and now ubiquity of Photoshop, this skill has largely fallen out of use. And if one does want to mimic the fresh, spontaneous, translucent, water-color-like properties of markers, Photoshop has several brushes, settings, and filters which come pretty close. When I did storyboards for J. Walter Thompson, I owned a dog-eared copy of Rendering With Markers. After several moves, and a conversion to digital art, my copy disappeared. When my youngest asked for a 36-pen set of Pental colored markers, I knew she needed an operators manual. Some day she may even thank me.

Maybe my fault, I was expecting a better examples from a very updated book... not what I was looking for...

There are lots of times and places where you just need to make a good picture - or good enough - really fast. What you need is to create a visual idea and to convey it, right now, to those people who literally won't get it until you draw a picture for them.

Marker rendering is the established way to do it. Saying that you use "markers" is just too weak, though. This is about doing whatever works, to make a picture that lasts just long enough. There are the masks or friskets, highlights in gouache or white grease pencil, cutouts, layers of paper, and all the other media that go into a "marker" rendering. Even when you use the markers by themselves, there are endless variations of line, weight, guides (surely you've customized your triangles to lift the edge away from wet marks), color, and gray. Heck, you might have more than 20 markers even if you have only grays, warm and cool, in a dozen values, and new/juicy vs. old/dry.

This can work well as a text, with a series of graded exercises. It just can't stand by itself, though, it really needs a good teacher to go with it. You'll need someone with a trained eye for the gazillion things that go wrong, and with a back pocket full of ways to make them go right.

As far as it goes, this book is really good. If your pictures are there to convey an idea and not just to be pictures, this book is one of the student's best friends.

//wiredweird

More info about his book, along with a useful reading list for aspiring artists of the comic genre, available at Amazon.com, is available for your perusal at: