Review of Capture the Moment: An Architect’s Guide to Travel Sketching
Review by Frank Edgerton Martin | October 21, 2021
ORO Editions
BOOK VALUE
“We race through life so fast that our grasp of things is often only skin-deep,” writes Minnesota architect Jim Lammers, FAIA. “Maybe it’s time to slow down a bit and take a look at what we’re missing.”
So begins Capture the Moment, Lammers’ illustrated guide to sketching—a book so inspiring that I ran out to the neighborhood art-supply store for pencils and paper the afternoon I finished it. For people like me, who grew up convinced that drawing skills were generally reserved for artists and architects, it’s a pleasant surprise to learn that we can sketch just for ourselves as a way of connecting more deeply with places through the physical gestures of drawing.
Sketches by Jim Lammers, FAIA, from Capture the Moment: Ella Forest Monastery, Sri Lanka; floating dock at Kwatsi Bay Marina, British Columbia; Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Brandenburger Tor, Berlin; Catedral Metropolitana, Mexico City; Chinatown; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Patos Island U.S. Coast Guard station, Washington state.
Divided into five main chapters, Capture the Moment is filled with sketches from Lammers’ travels to countries including Myanmar, Portugal, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Colombia, and Denmark. It also features a handful of drawings from architects Lammers has known and worked with over the course of his long career, including Dewey Thorbeck, FAIA, Choy Leow, AIA, and the late Vic Gilbertson, FAIA.
The guidebook moves from pencil sketching to color sketching and on to building elevations and one-, two-, and multiple-point perspectives. Along the way, Lammers shares humorous anecdotes from several of his sketching experiences; he even includes a two-point perspective of a church in which he flubbed the vanishing points. At each stage, readers are given simple skill-building exercises, such as “Go to your favorite rooftop restaurant and, while waiting for your meal to arrive, sketch the skyline that you see.”
Lammers shows us how to create contrast and shadows through denser, darker pencil tones. For color, he uses Prismacolor pencils that he sharpens on one end to a fine point and the other to a wedge. We learn about color theory and how to blend pencil colors. In many cases, we’re shown how to use a Micron pen to outline the pencil work for greater contrast.
Sketches by Jim Lammers, FAIA, from Capture the Moment: Hakgala Botanical Gardens, Sri Lanka; intersection in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Jami Ul-Alfar Mosque, Colombo, Sri Lanka; Vila Sassetti, Sintra, Portugal; staff quarters at Dent Island Resort, British Columbia; Igreja do Loreta in Lisbon, Portugal; two views of Plaza de Santa Domingo, Cartagena, Colombia; Sultan Mosque, Singapore.
Many of Lammers’ works shown in the galleries here were sketched in just three minutes during tours of Buddhist temples, for example, or when his fellow travelers were having lunch. Capture the Moment’s message is that, with practice, perseverance, and the courage to ignore what others think, all of us can learn to draw buildings and cultural landscapes.
“The only bad sketch is the sketch that wasn’t made,” Lammers writes in the last chapter, “Keep on Sketching.” “Don’t overthink your sketch,” he adds. “It needs to be spontaneous. After a while all the rules and techniques will be packed into your subconscious, and you’ll be able to sketch intuitively.”
Purchase from an independent bookstore near you. A video review of the guide can be found here.