Presents simple handicraft projects that can be snuck into everyday places, including a small wash line, tissue-paper cupcakes, cork sailboats, and paper fortune cookies.

Urban sketcher Mike Daikubara gives beginners a crash course in location sketching that you can use in any city or town in Sketch Now, Think Later.

Learn to observe the world more deeply—with curiosity, empathy, and joy—as you sketch the stories unfolding all around you. In Drawn on the Way, Sarah Nisbett shares her techniques for creating captivating line drawings that capture the moments and moods that you encounter on the train, in a café, outdoors, anywhere: a young woman lost in thought, a pair of hands clasped on a lap, a peppy beagle, a pair of jeans-clad crossed legs. Sarah invites you to see the people, animals, places, and objects you draw with compassionate curiosity—as more than a stranger or inanimate object, but as someone or something with a story worth knowing or imagining. Even if you are inexperienced at drawing or don’t consider yourself an artist, you can learn how to create sketches from start to finish employing techniques such as contour drawing, using line work to add texture, and adding spot color—and discover how each sketch tells a story. You’ll begin to focus on important details that reveal something about the subject you’re drawing: the graceful drape of a hand over a purse, the shy way someone tucks their feet underneath them. As you unplug, set aside perfectionism, and explore the world through drawing, you’ll learn: How to translate what you see into a compelling drawing How to silence your inner critic and find joy in drawing what captures your interest Techniques for drawing figures and creating quick portraits How to find the emotion in objects by asking questions How to draw scenes and backgrounds without becoming overwhelmed How to quickly and expressively render the natural world, including plants and animals How key details can take a sketch from plain to captivating Ways to find the extraordinary in the everyday How to transform mistakes into likeable elements Tips for becoming a visual storyteller Life lessons learned from years of live drawing We spend most of our lives on the way, rushing and running from place to place, task to task. When we have a spare minute, we usually reach for our phones and shut everything else out. The techniques, projects, and ideas in Drawn on the Way are designed to help you be more mindful about drawing, to capture the people, places, and things you encounter each day. By doing that, you’ll connect with humanity in a deeper, more meaningful way—and discover a lot about yourself.

"Resisting his own urge to walk away, award-winning artist George Butler took his sketchbook and made, over the course of a decade, a series of remarkable pen-and-ink and watercolor portraits in war zones, refugee camps, and on the move. While he worked, his subjects--migrants and refugees in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia--shared their stories. Theirs are the human stories behind the headlines that tell of fleeing poverty, disaster, and war, and of venturing into the unknown in search of jobs, education, and security. Whether sketching by the hospital bed of a ten-year-old Syrian boy who survived an airstrike, drawing the doll of a little Palestinian girl with big questions, or talking with a Masai herdsman forced to abandon his rural Kenyan home for the Kibera slums, George Butler turns reflective art and sensitive reportage into an eloquent cry for understanding and empathy."--

For the last ten years, urban sketcher Marc Taro Holmes has been on a mission to travel the world drawing and painting on location. Thousands of loyal readers worldwide have been following his award-winning blog at CitizenSketcher.com, learning from his freely shared articles featuring hundreds of sketchbook drawings and watercolor paintings, his first-hand experiments with field-sketching gear, free downloadable art-workshops, and numerous over-the-shoulder, step-by-step demonstrations Along the way Marc wrote the instant classic: The Urban Sketcher: Techniques for Seeing and Drawing on Location (4.6 stars 180+ reviews). Marc is also the presenter of two online courses: Travel Sketching in Mixed Media and Sketching People in Motion (available from Craftsy.com). With his latest book, Direct Watercolor Marc brings you a retrospective collection of over eighty of his watercolor paintings, painted side-by-side with fellow urban sketchers in ten different countries. This is the work of a plein-air painter at the top of his game, seen for the first time as a single body of work, and accompanied with his latest thoughts on the medium of watercolor. Also included - six completely new step-by-step demonstrations, systematically explaining his deceptively simple approach to painting. Marc shows you how to paint rapidly, with little or no preparation and the minimum of supplies, unlocking the secrets of spontaneous, expressive watercolor, with a unique personal vision. Whether you're already one of Marc's readers or are about to discover his boldly expressive approach, Direct Watercolor offers you the keys to unlocking your own adventures as a sketchbook artist, traveling watercolorist, or unconventional studio painter. Please note: This ebook version of Direct Watercolor is only suitable for full-color displays such as the Kindle Fire, or the Kindle app for tablets, phones, laptops, and computers.

Bear and Hamster are perfectly content... until gadget-mad salesman, Sneaky Beak, arrives. But when they finally have it all, will Bear and Hamster really be happier? A hilarious story with an important message about the pitfalls of materialism.