France Sketchbooks - by Laurie Olin (Hardcover)

About the Book

For centuries artists and designers have recorded places, people, and life in travel sketchbooks. Over a period of fifty years, Laurie Olin, one of America's most distinguished landscape architects, has recorded aspects of France: its cities and countryside, streets and cafes, ancient ruins, vineyards, and parks--from humble to grand, things that interested his designer's eye--taking the time to see things carefully. Paris in its seasons, agriculture in Provence and Bordeaux, trees, dogs, and fountains, all are noted over the years in watercolor or pen and ink. Originally intended for the pleasure of merely being there as well as self-education, this personal selection from his many sketchbooks is accompanied by transcriptions of notes and observations, along with introductory remarks for the different regions included: Paris, Haute Loire, Provence, Haute Provence, Normandy, Aquitaine, and Entre des Meures.

Book Synopsis

For centuries artists and designers have recorded places, people, and life in travel sketchbooks. Over a period of fifty years, Laurie Olin, one of America's most distinguished landscape architects, has recorded aspects of France: its cities and countryside, streets and cafes, ancient ruins, vineyards, and parks--from humble to grand, things that interested his designer's eye--taking the time to see things carefully. Paris in its seasons, agriculture in Provence and Bordeaux, trees, dogs, and fountains, all are noted over the years in watercolor or pen and ink. Originally intended for the pleasure of merely being there as well as self-education, this personal selection from his many sketchbooks is accompanied by transcriptions of notes and observations, along with introductory remarks for the different regions included: Paris, Haute Loire, Provence, Haute Provence, Normandy, Aquitaine, and Entre des Meures.

Review Quotes

"At a time when traveling to a far off landscape is nearly impossible, France Sketchbooks transports the reader to Paris and the surrounding countryside in sumptuous detail, capturing in drawings the streets and cafes of the city of lights, combined with wonderful watercolour paintings of the surrounding Provence region. Edited along with award winning book designer Pablo Mandel, Laurie Olin writes in his foreword to the book how there are a number of different reasons why we draw, or as he calls it, 'the art of looking at something carefully, ' with France Sketchbooks offering up here fifty years' worth of sketches from over twenty of his sketchbooks. He notes how great painters would often make studies before their final work through careful detail drawings, noting how travel sketches are something different, being as they are ends in themselves."--Sean Ruthen "Spacing: Canadian Urbanism Uncovered"