Astronomical Sketching: A Step-by-Step Introduction (The Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy Series)

Let's face it, not many people are into astronomical sketching. But for those who are this is THE book. I know of no other book quite like it. I've been to most of the web sites on astronomical sketching. They can be very helpful. In fact, I learned later that several of the web sites I found most helpful were by the authors of this book! Websites help, but, even the web sites are incomplete. Sketching is covered regularly in various astronomy magazines. Those articles are also helpful, but it would take years for them to cover the material covered in this book. If you want to try your hand at Astronomical Sketching, you need this book to get you started.

A wonderful guide to the facinating methods of our fore fathers and a great way to mobe your onserving to a mew level. The authors take you om a guided trip of how to proceed, what to use and how to suceed at this wonderful art form. And as they do show you that no matter how great (or small) your skill how yjou will gain in the enjoyment of the heavens. Covers mutiple techniques and most subjects you might find. Highly to be recomend to all who have though of trying to capture an eyepiece view in thier log.

Although I imagine a fair amount of the techniques and approaches in this book are covered in other books on sketching, the focus on astronomical targets is beneficial. The authors go over various targets from the moon to galaxies to star clusters both open and globular, and techniques from graphite pencil sketching to charcoal and colored pencil work. Very solid resource, and one of the only on the subject of astronomical sketching. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to pursue sketching of the moon, planets, and other heavenly subjects.

I am very disappointed in this book - two and a half stars at best. I expected to see much more "how to" in the topics covered. The section on the Moon is the only one that comes sort of close. I am not an artist, so I was looking for something that covered specific techniques for drawing what is seen through a telescope eyepiece. Patrick Moore's Practical Astronomy series books are generally pretty good (I have several), but this one misses the mark by a large margin. I think a much more thought could have been given to the step-by-step instructions overall, and especially in the sections on nebulae and galaxies. A huge amount should have been written about tips and tricks.Given the popularity of amateur astronomy, I would expect there to be a lot more books written on astronomical sketching.

I was already familiar with most of the material in this book. If you have any art training you probably already know the techniques. The strength of this book is the detail given on how to use art techniques to draw astronomical objects! Even if you know little about art it is detailed enough to get you started at a high level of sketching at the eyepiece.

If you're interested in learning how to sketch astronomical objects you can't go wrong with this book. Even if you don't feel you have much artistic talent there are techniques, methods and supplies mentioned in this book that will improve even the most modest sketch!

The book pages are printed upside down for the first 50 pages and the bottom sentences are chopped off. Must be a problem with the printer/publisher. I returned my first book and the received a new book with the same issues. Very poor.

Approaches to different subjects are well set out. Inclusion of some information on digitizing would be useful but internet web-sites are listed that provide some further discussion and instruction about that by the authors. Tips and techniques are spread throughout different chapters. Perhaps it would have been better to have them presented in one section but it's not a big issue.