If you're someone who brings a sketchbook on every walk, hike, or city outing, you might already be familiar with the Urban Sketching Handbook series. These compact books are packed with tips and visuals to support the habit of sketching on location. Today, I’m sharing my thoughts on one of my favorite titles in the series: The Urban Sketching Handbook Spotlight on Nature.
I picked this book up during a season when I was trying to move beyond buildings and capture more of the natural world—especially trees, clouds, and little quiet pockets of green I noticed in urban areas. If you enjoy urban sketching but feel unsure how to tackle nature as part of your scenes, this book has a ton to offer. It gave me practical tools and a new mindset for sketching nature on location without overcomplicating things.
It’s co-authored by Virginia Hein and Gail Wong, two well-respected artists and educators in the urban sketching world. The format follows the “Keys” approach seen in other titles in the series, making it easy to flip to the part you need whether you’re sketching trees in the city or trying to bring more life to your landscapes. You can find more of my thoughts on similar guides on my page about urban sketching books.
Key Points from The Urban Sketching Handbook Spotlight on Nature
Here are three takeaways I found especially helpful:
- Treat nature as both a subject and a supporting character. You don’t always need a perfect landscape. Even just a few branches or a peek of sky can add life to a scene dominated by architecture. This book helped me notice how leaves, rocks, shadows, and skies can all shape the atmosphere of a sketch.
- Use observational clues to simplify complexity. There’s a great section on handling masses of foliage without getting overwhelmed—something I struggled with before. I learned how to break down visual chaos into clear shapes and patterns.
- Think about the character of a place. Weather, time of day, season, even the type of plant life—they all contribute to a sketch’s story. The book encourages you to observe more deeply and draw what makes the scene feel unique, not just what it looks like.
How The Urban Sketching Handbook Spotlight on Nature Fits Into My Practice
I’ve been sketching for years, and while I never needed encouragement to draw trees or rocks, I did need help making them work within a scene. This book bridges that gap beautifully. It gave me permission to include nature in a way that feels spontaneous and expressive, rather than tight and overly detailed.
It’s not a step-by-step beginner guide. You won’t find basic drawing exercises like you might in easy urban sketching for beginners. Instead, it assumes you already know how to draw and want to deepen your sketching language—especially your ability to capture fleeting natural elements in real time.
One of the most useful sections is about Finding Nature in the City. It helped me better integrate nature into my urban compositions, especially when working from urban sketching reference photos or sketching on site with my simple urban sketching kit. I started noticing tiny moments of greenery—ivy crawling up brick walls, reflections of clouds in glass buildings, clusters of weeds near bus stops—and saw them as sketchable opportunities.
Highlights from the Book's Structure and Content
The book is organized around six sectionss:
Key I: How We See Nature
This first section reminds you to slow down and see nature not just as filler, but as something with personality and presence. Are the trees the star of the scene or just creating rhythm in the background? I started asking myself that question every time I opened my sketchbook.
Key II: How We Draw Nature
Great discussion on depth, overlapping forms, tree limbs, and rock shapes. Before reading this, I often got lost in the detail and overworked everything. This section showed me how to simplify what I see into useful shapes and values.
There are notes on how to paint clouds without outlining them (a habit I’m guilty of), and how to group shadows and light patches to describe volume, especially on things like foliage and boulders. I still refer back to these tips when I draw anything with texture.
Key III: Finding the Character of a Place
This was probably my favorite section. I started thinking more about how weather and light shape the feel of a place, and it added a new level of storytelling to my nature journaling.
Now I sketch more often during odd times of day—early morning, twilight, cloudy afternoons—because those lighting situations feel more narratively rich. The book encouraged me to notice not just what I’m seeing, but why it feels like that moment in time.
Key IV: Finding Nature in the City
If you’ve ever tried to draw around telephone poles or parking lots, this section helps you find beauty in less obvious places. It pairs nicely with my thoughts on urban sketching trees and really made me pay attention to contrasts. There’s something powerful about a tree pressing against a chain link fence or a crow landing on a streetlamp.
There are some great examples of artists who captured those unexpected moments. It made me realize you don’t need a forest to draw nature—a dandelion in a crack or light filtering through leaves is enough.
Key V: Materials and Media
There’s a quick look at tools, from ink to watercolor to gouache. If you want to dive deeper into this, I also wrote a full guide to watercolor urban sketching.
This section touches on texture and color use. For example, using wet-on-wet watercolor for skies, salt for sparkle in water, or drybrush for bark. Even if you’ve been painting for a while, you might pick up something new here. It encouraged me to experiment more with non-traditional materials like sponges and tissue.
Key VI: Gallery and Workshops
This section shows finished sketches and includes small challenges you can try out on your next outing. I only wish it were longer—the artwork is inspiring and varied. The exercises are more like prompts than tutorials, which works well if you’re looking to break out of a routine or try something different.
I tried one of the prompts about drawing the same tree at different times of day and ended up with a whole spread in my sketchbook showing how light changed the mood. That was a direct outcome of reading this book.
Who This Book Is For
You’ll get the most out of The Urban Sketching Handbook; Spotlight on Nature if you already sketch regularly and want to improve your observation skills or natural element integration. It’s not a drawing basics book. If you're looking for those, I’d point you to resources like simple easy urban sketching or my full urban sketching course.
That said, the book is compact and beautifully designed, with an elastic band closure, making it ideal for taking out on sketching walks. I keep it in my urban sketching bag alongside my favorite pens. It’s the kind of book you can flip through quickly when you’re stuck or need inspiration before heading out.
Even after finishing it, I find myself revisiting the sketches and margin notes. It’s one of those books that grows with you as your skills evolve.
Final Thoughts and Where to Go Next
If you’re feeling stuck on how to bring nature into your urban scenes or want to elevate your understanding of what makes a natural element sketch-worthy, this book is a smart investment. You can check it out directly here: The Urban Sketching Handbook Spotlight on Nature.
And if you're curious about where to take your sketching next, I’ve put together a bunch of urban sketching tutorials, drawing ideas, and tips for urban sketching you might find useful. Whether you're exploring loose urban sketching, refining your palette, or testing out new paper, it all connects back to observing and capturing the world around you—one sketch at a time.