Monthly Archives: March 2020

Above: Corner Window (my sketch)

One of the difficulties confronting the student who tries sketching directly from buildings is the complication in the effect of glass resulting from … reflections, for often trees and buildings and skies and clouds and people are all pictured in the windows, showing so plainly as to prove confusing, for the images are not only somewhat distorted, as a rule, because of imperfections in the glass, but are crisscrossed by the sash bars and mingled and blended with the curtains in a most bewildering manner. It is not easy, therefore, to know just what to put in and what to leave out…”
 Arthur Guptill, Sketching and Rendering in Pencil, page 125

The first of Arthur Guptill’s superb instructional books, published in 1922, has entered the Public Domain. I read a small selection from Guptill entitled “Rendering Reflections in Window Glass” for the 71st volume of the LibriVox Short Nonfiction Collection.

You can listen to my recording here.
You can read Guptill’s book here:

Sketching and Rendering in Pencil is filled with Guptill’s original sketches.  Here is on-line access to these sketches from Guptill’s book, page 128 

You might enjoy:

Hooke’s Microscope

On the Point of a Small Sharp Needle

Churchill at the Surf Club, Miami Beach, 1946

Painting as a Pastime