Product Description

Ray Campbell Smith shows how to capture the freshness and beauty of watercolours and a wonderful range of buildings in his own distinctive style. He explains all his techniques clearly, from the initial planning and composition of a picture, to choosing colours, applying washes and portraying the different effects of age and weathering.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112709 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 48 pages

About the Author
Ray Campbell Smith FRSA, FBSP, BWS is a well-respected and well-known professional artist, author, tutor and lecturor. He demonstrates regularly to students, art groups and societies, and has written several successful art instruction books. He regularly contributes articles to leading art magazines and his work is featured in collections all over the world. Ray lives in Kent.

Customer Reviews

Absolutely Useless!
From the blurb about this book, I had the impression it would deliver what it said it would- a book that would give tips and techniques on how to paintvarious aspects of building- i.e different textures, useful colour combinations for achieving a realistic looking surface and all of the other things one would expect in a more or less step by step guide. Instead, all this book provides is a way for the painter himself to talk about and show off his own work. He goes on in every write up about every painting how he did this and that but doesnt give any details on what colour mixes he used or how he got the effects he did. It is really just a showcase of the artist work in disguise as a step by step guide. At the end, there are two very laborious and not very well explained demonstations that make great leaps from one stage to the other and are difficult to follow. I realise that these types of books arent there to teach you to paint per se. I am a fairly experienced painter but what I was looking for was some guidance to help me branch out into painting architecture and this book failed to serve that purpose. It is worth about half a star. The most useless art book I have ever bought.

useful and practical book
Beautiful book with practical advice. The author demonstrates his wonderful pictures and explains how they were made. He describes techniques, relates what colours he used, and singles out details. You can see what he does to paint weathered brickwork, old colour washed wall, signs of rising damp. Next to many picture there is a list of colours used and an explanation of how they were applied and why. Step by step demonstrations at the end of the book provided great results.

Captions to many pictures describe colours in detail. For example: "... cumulus sky went in first, with washes of pale raw sienna for the lower sky; French ultramarine and light red for the cloud shadows, and Winsor blue and French ultramarine for the blue sky. I let these washes blend softly but retained some hard edges. The sunlit brickwork and tiles were various pale blends of light red and burnt sienna, with touches of ....". And it goes on to describe all the other colours and methods, so the explanations are thourough.