Learn Sketching from Sess

Author: (American) Jacobs / Mou Baizhi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: This book covers the essence of multiple works by American artist Jacobs. The techniques are skilled, the style is delicate and fluent, giving the characters a flexible personality. At the same time, the text is concise and unique, making it an excellent book on sketching techniques. As a teacher at an art college, I have reviewed many books on sketching instruction. This book, Learning to Sketch with Ted Jacobs, was introduced to me by the planning editor, Ms. Qin Xixia, who asked me to translate and proofread it. When anyone first receives a book on painting, they usually skim it before delving deeper. But in this case, I was immediately drawn to the sketches in the book. They are not the typical practice sketches for mastering basic principles that one sees, but rather a carrier for expressing emotions through the language of sketching. The author judges the quality of a painting not by whether it objectively represents the subject but by how well it expresses the artist's subjectivity. In other words, creating a form with personal characteristics on the canvas is what truly adds value. The sketches in the book may appear realistic, but they are actually filled with personal emotions and unique descriptive methods. They contain both fundamental principles and profound philosophical concepts—the artist's thinking.
The author starts with visual cognition, which is very scientific, because the process of painting is about expressing visual perceptions in visible forms. Different ways of perceiving will lead to different results. Typically, our inherent notions of things can distort the visual information we receive. The flaws in our concepts. The "concepts" mentioned in the book refer to the ideas about things formed through visual experience. We know that "seeing" is not something one is born with; it must be learned. When a congenitally blind person undergoes surgery to regain their sight, the first time they see the world, they only see a chaotic image of light and color and cannot recognize what it is. Only through touch, sound, and smell can they form a concept of what they see. To understand something, one must first have a pre-existing concept of it. This pre-existing concept is what the book calls "concepts," but these inherent notions of objects often prevent us from observing them correctly from a specific angle, instead replacing "what we see" with "what we know."