Series: Sierra Club Books Publication | Publication Date: April 1, 1997
This lavishly illustrated sketching and watercolor primer reveals how creating art can enhance any wilderness experience. With a skillful blend of inspiration and instruction, artist and naturalist Cathy Johnson offers personal anecdotes, exercises, and helpful tips to guide even first-time artists in using sketching and painting to deepen their understanding of the natural world. Featuring simple, step-by-step instructions and 280 examples of the author's own work—in color and black-and-white—The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature covers a broad range of subjects, including tools and equipment; mixing paints and washes; understanding color and using a color wheel; capturing the illusion of light; sketching clouds, flowers, trees, plants, and animals; and using field sketches as studies for future paintings. The book also includes source lists for art supplies (including mail order), lists of national workshops for sketching and painting, and a bibliography.
Johnson, the author and illustrator of 17 books on art and nature, has updated her popular 1991 volume in the "Sierra Club" series. An inspiration for the naturalist/ artist, this practical, readable work focuses on drawing and sketching as ways of deepening one's relationship with nature. The complexities of color theory are kept to a minimum. Helpful source lists for art suppliers, national art workshops, and the bibliography have been brought up-to- date. This and Wendy Jelbert's Painting Nature's Details (Batsford Ltd., dist. by Trafalgar Square, 1996), which represents the fine arts perspective, should satisfy nearly all patrons. Highly recommended for general collections. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Inside Flap
Revised and updated with 280 sketches and paintings, this new edition will appeal to the large market of nature lovers, aspiring artists, botanists, birdwatchers, teachers, hikers and naturalists.
Cathy Johnson, sometimes known as Kate, has worked as a naturalist, writer, and freelance artist for the past 30 years, and was staff naturalist and contributing editor for Country Living magazine for 11 years. She is a contributing editor to the Artist's Magazine and Watercolor Magic and has had a regular column in Personal Journaling magazine, where she wrote on a subject she feels passionately about -- realizing the importance of creativity in our lives. She has written and illustrated -- her own work and that of others -- for a number of national magazines, including Science Digest, Harrowsmith Country Life, Sports Afield, Country Journal, Muzzlelader, Women's History, Early American Life, Sketchbook, Woodworker, Woman's Day, Threads, Mother Earth News, National Wildlife Magazine, Sierra and others. Her writing and artwork have been included in a number of nature anthologies and art books.
She has written and illustrated 29 books, and contributed to a number of others, working with a variety of national publishing houses. Those include North Light/F&W, Time/Life, Sierra Club, Random House, Scholastic, Globe Pequot Press, Gibbs-Smith Publisher, Tehabi, Van Nostrand Reinhold, Walker Publications, Prentice-Hall Press, Penguin, Stackpole and others.
Many of these books have been published in editions overseas, as well, in Russia, Japan, Holland, France and England.
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.
Her paintings are included in a number of private and corporate collections in this country and abroad, including Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, MO; F&W Publications/North Light Books, Cincinnati, OH; Early American Life Magazine, Harrisburg, PA; The Kansas City Life Insurance Co., Kansas City, MO; and Newcomers Funeral Home, Kansas City, MO.
Her original jewelry has also found its way overseas, to Scotland and Great Britain, and is included in the Images of the Archetype Collection in Glasgow, Scotland..
Her green man and fantasy paintings and sculptures are currently in a one-woman show online at http://www.greenmanreview.com/gallery-kate/index.html.
She is a longtime member of the Author's Guild and the Costume Society of America. 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.
This review is from: The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature, Revised Edition (Paperback)
This is a pretty complete little volume. When you get it, you really do have to assume some knowledge and practice of making art and the media, however, she goes over materials and techniques, which can serve as a good refresher or initial exposure.
The best part is a discussion early on about how to pack all the materials so you don't keel over from exhaustion, hauling too much art gear, along with the usual standard hiking goodies. (I especially needed help with that, given my childlike adoration of way too many pretty colors.)
The emphasis is on SKETCHING, not doing the Mona Lisa. This is important in outdoor work as light changes and speed can be of the essence. I sometimes pick up this book so that I can just relax my techniques a bit.
The examples in the book, in many media and in monochrome or color are a delight to view. Sometimes, it's just fun to sit down with a cuppa and flip through the nice drawings of objects and scenes in nature.
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This review is from: The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature, Revised Edition (Paperback)
This book provides a tremendous amount of information on sketching in nature but don't let the title fool you- this is a terrific general sketching and drawing book. Johnson covers topics that are rarely covered in other books. The use of pens, watercolors, pencils and colored pencils (both water soluble and not) are covered. This is an invaluable book and is an asset to both the beginner and more advanced student. I'm on Amazon right now trying to find other books by Cathy Johnson- I'm that impressed.
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This review is from: The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature, Revised Edition (Paperback)
This is a very refreshing book. Cathy Johnson not only makes it look easy to draw and paint loose, yet accurate, watercolor sketches outdoors, but she tells you everything you need to know. This book will actually teach you how to draw and paint what you see, without making things overly complicated. Best of all, her supply list is well within the means of most people. I really enjoyed this book, and learned a great deal from it. This summer, I caught Lyme disease. It's nasty. For months, I could hardly walk, let alone hike and garden and do stuff I used to love. But Cathy's book has helped draw me back outside, and I'm learning to love nature all over again, one leaf, flower, and bug at a time. This book would make a great gift.
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