Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #604334 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

Beautiful Paintings From a Master
This book is aimed for an intermediate to advanced level watercolorist. The majority of the book focuses on the author's fascination with portraying light as it hits colorful subjects. The subjects range from beautiful colored glass such as wine and perfume decanters to brass musical instruments to breathtaking architectural and landscape paintings.

Other than the first chapter that gives a very quick overview of a few techniques such as blotting, drybrushing, scraping, pouring, etc. it is not an overly comprehensive book on every aspect of watercolor painting. For example, only 1-2 page cursory discussions are given to subjects such as composition, creating textures, values, leading eye movement arrangements of a painting, etc. When they are discussed the subjects are always tied back to the book's main theme - light. So eye movement is discussed, for example, in how light helps achieve this goal to make a strong painting.

Another subject which the author doesn't address is color mixing and color theory. Which is something that rather surprised me since I think of color as being intimately tied to the subject of light. Also there is frequent use of alizarin crimson in many of the painting demonstrations which some new painters may not know is a rapidly fading color. Fortunately there are 2 relatively new very permanent pigments on the market that are dead-on ringers for traditional alizarin crimson when you mix them together. W&N Permanent Carmine, which is a quinacridone/diketo-pyrole pigment + any brand with only PR122 as the listed pigment. In fact, W&N offers these two pigments as a convenience color mix named Permanent Alizarin Crimson. I have painted washes of my true alizarin crimson right next to the quinacridone/PR122 mix and could not tell the difference. Neither could my boyfriend when I asked him to try to pick which was the real alizarin crimson and which was the mix.

One of the most intriguing chapters was on painting light at night. The cover painting is only one of the types of night scenes this chapter covers. There are others such as streetlight fog at night and architectural spotlighting. Overall this book is a good overview for seeing how one element of painting - light - can be pushed to amazing effect. And although I said this book is of most use to intermediate to advanced watercolorists it can not fail to help beginners since the paintings are so inspiring and beginners will eventually move up to intermediate level anyway.