Color Drawing: Design Drawing Skills and Techniques for Architects, Landscape Architects, and Interior Designers

Excellent reference book for explaining techniques for drawing with Prismacolor markers and pencils, which are the primary instruments used by interior designers to use in color renderings. Book has the shortcuts and techniques needed to help take what you learn in drawing class to a higher level.

Maybe the title to this high quality book should start "The idiot's guide to..." or "The Dummy's guide..." I hadn't really drawn since I was at school and when I started studying interior design and realized I had to be able to realistically draw/paint lighting effects and shadows etc etc I went into a state of shock! Thank goodness I bought this book. It isn't filled with masses of boring text that is trying to teach you a visual subject. It's right there in front of you, page after page of colourful, step by step drawings. Be warned that marker pens are the favoured medium in this book. So if you are looking for a book about water colouring or gouache, you won't find it here. On the other hand, it is an excellent guide, I think, to how affects are achieved, whatever medium you prefer, and the book makes it all so simple.

Probably no other book has influenced my techniques and choice of media other than this one; a true masterpeice. The examples and their implementation are very useful and easy to do, the book presumes that u have a sizable knowlege in perspective and other techniques of drawing but helps to improve your skills in COLORED presentations taking various examples from drawing shinning objects to full scale projects. The description of materials in the beginning is short though, but is enough for the intermediate user, and the book heavily uses the PRISMACOLOR markers so if u are not used to these and don't intend to use them look for another manual. In short it is a job well done!

A rare technique book that not only demonstrates technique but helps you choose the proper art supplies. The recommendation of specific tools and colors is crucial to quick success and happily eliminates a more time consuming trial and error approach. Once one follows the directions of several examples, the logic becomesintuitive; for example, one grasps the desired range of value gradations, sees the possibility of melding two colors together with an intermediate value, or appreciates the effect of tinting highlight colors with the color of surrounding ambient light. Personal palette choices can be easily intuited from the standards gleaned from the book. Various units in the book explore the rendering of common materials or objects ; for example, vertical and horizontal wood siding, glass, metal,trees, etc. The sample of finished work is so admirable it easily inspires one to experiment with their own markers and pencils.

OK, I will be honest. I have the older edition. It's got some campy early 80's scenes in it, but I found it essential in understanding how color hits building materials. If you are an architect or architectural student, you will need this book so that you can put some life into your drawings. If you are just an amateur like me, you still need this book.Learning how to draw using Doyle's techniques is useful for travel diaries, sketching, and so on. Since you are using color markers and pencils and blending the colors, you get a kind of richness and depth in drawings that don't come from just one medium alone. Also, the media (markers and pencils) are dry and won't spill in your backpack or attache when hauling it around places to do sketches and so on. (I took a mess of pencils and markers to Europe and it was easier to deal with than the trip I took after, where my watercolor paint froze on the travel diary!)I'm gonna put the latest edition on my wish list and hope Santa is good to me this season :-)