Vibrant Acrylics || Hashim Akib

While the watercolour style of acrylics has been widely covered, the oils approach, and impasto in particular has been largely ignored. However, this has been remedied here quite spectacularly, for Hashim Akib paints in a very heavy impasto style as well as making full use of the brighter colours that generally feature in the acrylic palette. “Vibrant”, a word often bandied about in book titles, is certainly valid here.

I’ve said elsewhere that this isn’t so much about the mechanics of painting as the art and philosophy of it, and it’s worth repeating the book’s opening sentence, “The best tool for learning how to paint is to paint” because it sums up the attitude and feel that’s here.

Hashim Akib’s method is worth summing up, too. He starts almost every painting with a complementary coloured ground (done with a preparatory coat rather than a commercially prepared support) and then builds the body of the work on top of that. The result allows him also to use colours to define form as well as add depth and movement to subjects ranging from street scenes to portraits, landscapes and flowers.

Hashim’s style is very much his own and this isn’t a book you’ll probably want to follow through in detail, although there are plenty of demonstrations you can try. However, if you like the impasto style and want to have a go, there’s plenty to get you started. If you already paint in this way, then you’re certainly going to admire the book and want to own it for its own sake.

Drawing & Painting Sports Figures || Jim Scullion

There’s no doubt that this is a niche market and I’d rather suspect that there may be more take-up in the sports market and by those who are looking for a showcase of the author’s work than there will be among its avowed practical art audience.

That’s a shame because, as a guide to painting the human figure in action, this is hard to better. The author has clearly studied his topic, and his subjects, in depth and he captures both general and specific poses with confidence and aplomb. The original cover image was going to be a portrait of Andy Murray just after he has won a point (it now seems to be missing from the book altogether) that absolutely conveyed, far better than any photograph, the pose and expression as well as the pent-up aggression Murray displays on these occasions. I don’t want to labour this change, because there are plenty of other, similar images in the book, but it was always going to be my way into the review and it’s something I’m familiar with, my interest in sport not being all-encompassing.

One of the things you can’t help noticing as you look through the copious images (250 in a 96 page book is nothing less than generous) is that Jim’s paintings have a strongly commercial quality. This isn’t surprising, neither is it a criticism; there’s a particular style that the market for paintings of sportspeople demands. However, if you look a little further, although a lot of this is characterised by the modelling and the use of colour, it’s also about making the subject stand out from the background, which itself has to be appropriate. This is worth further consideration, as Jim uses both clearly-defined grounds, such as the St Andrews clubhouse in a golfing picture, as well as those which are more blurred when action but also context need to be defined, or completely abstract to show speed. It’s all cleverly done and a lesson in itself.

If you want to paint sport, then this is pretty much your only guide. However, I’d recommend that anyone interested in figure painting should give it at least a look. You may not find the style is to your taste, but the execution is superbly done and you can learn a lot from just that.

Terry’s Greatest Tips for Acrylic & Watercolour Artists || Terry Harrison

There was a sort of inevitability about this. Given the popularity of Terry Harrison and of the Top Tips series, there can’t be a publisher on earth who could resist stapling two pre-existing titles together.

It does make sense though, as acrylic and watercolour sit together better than any other two media and have a considerable degree of cross-over. If you haven’t already got the two donor books for this agglomeration, then it represents good value and gives you a lot of material to work with. The format remains the same and you still get the spiral binding that means the book will naturally lie flat in use.

Each of the two sections contains 100 tips, so there’s been a degree of editing, but you still get topics including the use of photographs, oil vs. watercolour techniques in acrylics, wet-on-wet vs. wet-on-dry, and subjects from skies and landscapes to water, boats, mountains and flowers.

I’ve always maintained that you should buy each of the volumes in this series as they come out. If you haven’t followed that advice, and you want somewhere to start, do it with this.

Drawing & Painting Horses || Eva Dutton

I’ve been writing about art books for more than thirty years (yes, it seems longer to me too) and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of books I’ve seen dedicated to drawing and painting horses. Some of this has to do with the fact that it’s quite a specialised subject and partly because they’re one of the most difficult animals to get right. Just getting all four legs in proportion seems to be beyond most artists. Stick to guinea pigs, they’re just adorable little lumps.

However, all those problems mean that pretty much anyone who does want to paint horses is going to need a really good guide and Eva Dutton is not going to let you down. Her thorough work is beautifully and generously illustrated and deals with all the practicalities such as conformation (basically, what makes a horse look horsey) as well as the techniques you need to capture hair, manes, eyes, hooves and everything else, both static and in motion.

Starting from basics and using simple block diagrams, Eva will show you how to get the shapes and structures right; this section is excellent on the practical, rather than the anatomical approach. From here, she moves on to things like motion and proportion and it’s in these sections that you start to learn how to give your work the character that makes for life and reality. Further chapters deal with backgrounds, colours and markings, as well as a handy selection of brushwork techniques.

The final section of the book is a series of five demonstrations that give you a chance to put what you’ve learned into practice. These are worth following as they give you a chance to work from a pre-planned image, rather than trying to get to grips with a moving creature before you’re ready.

This is a nicely thought-out and well-structured book from an author who is clearly comfortable with her subject.

Lee Hammond’s Big Book of Acrylic Painting

The above-the-title billing gives you a clue to Lee Hammond’s popularity in the US and, if the title suggests a bind-up, you’d be correct. The material has previously appeared in four other titles, but the selection here provides an excellent introduction to the medium. More substantial than many similar books, this one covers still lifes, landscapes, animals and people as well as the basic techniques. Each section is admirably thorough – the one on people includes exercises covering all the main facial elements as well as demonstrations that deal with both male and female subjects as well as babies and toddlers. Overall, there’s a good sense of your money’s worth here.

Flowers in Acrylics (How to Paint) || Tim Fisher

This series of introductory booklets has been throwing up some surprises of late and is in a little danger of suffering an identity crisis. The implication of the head title is that it’s aimed at the beginner, but recent additions have tended to be a little more advanced, while at the same time keeping the spirit of the simple approach. I don’t think that’s a bad thing necessarily, but there might be some confusion over who the target audience is and it could be in danger of being overlooked by the casual browser.

Tim Fisher paints in the oil style of the medium, frequently in quite a heavy impasto, a fact that’s worth knowing if that’s not your thing. The meat of the book is a series of three demonstrations, of increasing complexity, that showcase nicely what you can achieve, but this is only half of it. The rest comprises an introduction to materials that the more experienced will want to skip and some quite useful notes on tone, colour and colour mixing. There’s also a solid section on getting started which includes notes on sketching and composition.

All this is quite basic and, although the demonstrations are simply explained and comprehensively illustrated you can’t help feeling they’re quite a long way beyond the scope of anyone reading the book’s first half. It’s not that everything here isn’t massively useful, I’m just not sure that it’s useful to the same set of people. On the other hand, if you want to learn to paint flowers in acrylics (and a subject-based book in the medium is to be welcomed), this is for you.

	How To Paint Flowers in Acrylics Book with Tim Fisher

Renoir (Ready to Paint) || Noel Gregory

The Ready to Paint the Masters series has so far left me cold, but I can see a definite merit in this one as Noel Gregory has chosen to interpret the originals rather than copy them slavishly. In the process, he manages to tell you much more about the way Renoir worked and it’s an exercise worth following as the Impressionists laid the foundation for so much of the modern approach to painting. It’s to them that we owe looseness and interpretation and the abandonment of the studied formality that had built up prior to their arrival.

For this book, Noel uses acrylics rather than oils, but in impasto, so the net effect is similar and this is not an exercise in working in another medium, but simply the convenience of what’s available now. The interpretation comes rather from allowing for all the history that has come between then and now, and not trying to paint like an Old Master. If it was a radio, it would have a retro case and modern DAB innards; a bit of a mule, but none the worse for that.

As I sometimes do, I’m going to sit on the fence on this one. I’m not going to tell you to rush out and buy it, but I do think it’s worth a look as you might be pleasantly surprised.

	Ready to Paint the Masters – Renoir in Acrylics with Noel Gregory

Painting Acrylic Landscapes the Easy Way || Terry Harrison

Quite a lot of this (about a third) is taken up with a guide to using Terry’s proprietary brushes and I assume that’s what he means by “the easy way”. For the most part, these are likely to be things you already have, such as the 19mm flat or the Fan, but there are some, such as the Wizard, with its two hair lengths and used for foliage, that you might be glad to know about. I rather think that this section stands or falls on whether or not you buy into the Terry Harrison Method. He’s a very successful teacher, so maybe you do, and you should at least give it a look.

The second section is devoted to techniques, in which we’re talking about painting reflections, creating distance, adding life and using glaze medium. It’s more pictorial than technical, which is refreshing as it means we’re not being treated to a re-hash of basic stuff we can get elsewhere and from Terry himself, indeed.

The final section comprises six demonstrations, each of which is accomplished in about 6 pages and some thirty-odd steps – reasonably detailed but not overdone. You also get a couple of bonus examples related to the subject of the main piece.

There’s nothing wildly innovative here and the book is subtitled “Brush with Acrylics 2”, so it’s perfectly reasonable to expect more of what’s gone before. Indeed, the lack of innovation for its own sake is something its audience will probably welcome. You know where you are with Terry and, if he suddenly developed a bent for new-age abstracts, a lot of people would go into a sharp decline. Terry does what he does and knows what he does and he does it very well. Keep up the good work.

	Painting Acrylic Landscapes The Easy Way Book with Terry Harrison

Abstracts – 50 Inspirational Projects || Rolina Van Vliet

This is a nice change of direction in the literature of abstract painting. When it comes to abstracts, it’s the ideas behind the work that mainly count and it’s difficult to come up with a strictly instructional approach because you’re not simply representing a subject but interpreting it and, if you don’t have something to say, there’s not really any point in even getting started.

However, there are various muscles you can develop and working from a set of ideas and exercises based on what other artists have done will help you get the idea of where you’re supposed to be going and how you might get there. Rolina has come up with a good range of approaches such as the interplay of lines, monochrome working, even painting from photographs and to music. This latter is something that’s cropped up before and is an intriguing idea – you use a favourite piece to put yourself in a specific frame of mind and then simply (well, I say, “simply”) transfer that creativity to paper.

As well as the projects, Rolina has some useful comments on where you might look for sources of inspiration and, in her conclusion, a list of do’s and don’ts that every artist should have taped to their studio wall.

	Abstracts - 50 Inspirational Projects with Rolina van Vilet

Dragons (Ready to Paint) || Marc Potts

Fantasy art seems to pervade everything, or at least every series that Search Press manages to come up with, so I suppose it’s inevitable that the Ready to Paint series, with its pre-printed tracings and more than usually detailed step by step demonstrations would get round to it eventually. It even has its own logo, in a font that can only have sprung from someone’s fevered imagination. I doubt it’s been used elsewhere, so nice to see all that work not going to waste.

So far, so unfair and, now I’ve had my fun, I can say that if you want to paint dragons but are having a hard time with the drawing and the shapes, this is the book you’ve been looking for. Given the popularity of fantasy art, my guess is that it’ll have quite a wide appeal and I don’t think it’ll disappoint, either. Although the title doesn’t specify it, Marc has used acrylics throughout.

Buy it on Amazon