The Pastel Colour Wheel Book || John Barber

The format of this series is becoming familiar and the idea is that you can use the 8 projects, which include full-colour step by step demonstrations, in conjunction with the colour wheel built into the front cover. Yes, it’s a gimmick, but sometimes gimmicks concentrate the mind and, with the emphasis here on relatively simple combinations of colours, you can explore the possibilities of the medium, freed from at least one layer of complication.

If there’s a gripe, it’s that the paper chosen makes the illustrations look dull which is, it has to be said, a neat trick when the medium is the pure colour of pastel.

	The Pastel Colour Wheel Book with John Barber

The Oil Paint Colour Wheel Book || John Barber

The basic principle of this ingenious series is by now established. The cover includes a simple colour wheel and then the body of the text provides a series of eight demonstrations based around specific colour combinations. Neither of these things is original on its own, but the idea of putting them together is really quite inspired and provides a way in to what is for many a tricky subject.

The original watercolour volume used a trick paper that was supposed to mimic watercolour paper, not altogether successfully, but neither of its successors has gone down that path. However, the illustrations in both do seem rather dark, here to the point almost of murkiness and I do wonder whether there is a reproduction issue.

That aside, the series is a bold and largely successful attempt to provide a way through the maze that is colour mixing and is to be welcomed for that.

	The Oil Paint Colour Wheel Book with John Barber

The Acrylic Paint Colour Wheel Book || John Barber

This is the sister volume to the previous one on watercolour and, if it follows the success of that, it’s a fair bet we’ll be raising quite a family.

Most of what I said previously applies here. It’s a gimmick, but sometimes gimmicks make you sit up and suddenly understand what has previously been a problem subject. I still think that the illustrations are a bit flat, even though the trick paper has gone. Nevertheless, there’s a good variety of subject matter and the medium is used in both impasto and as a wash, so you get to see most of the techniques you’ll want.

I don’t think this is a book you’d buy at any price, but equally, it’s certainly not a tenner wasted.

	The Acrylic Paint Colour Wheel Book with John Barber

The Watercolour Wheel Book || John Barber

OK, this is a gimmick. It’s a book with a colour wheel on the front cover and a series of projects inside that are based on the mixing combination you can get from playing trains.

Actually, before we go any further, I have a couple of reservations. First up, the paper the book’s printed on: I think it’s supposed to look like a NOT watercolour paper, but it has the effect of making the illustrations look dull, the colours flat. Second, the actual quality of the artwork. Put it this way, let’s just say I’ve seen better.

But… But none of that matters because, although this is a gimmick, it’s a completely fresh way of looking at the whole problem of colour mixing and it might be just the thing that makes the whole tricky subject understandable for you. A friend of mine says that, if you want to call yourself an artist, colour mixing should be instinctive. However, the fact of the matter is that plenty of people one certainly wouldn’t call incompetent do struggle with it and the are a lot of books out there that sell in the sort of quantities that suggest it’s an ongoing struggle.

Will this be the one that stops the sales of all the others? Well, maybe not, but it’s an honest and imaginative attempt and, at less than a tenner, no more that the price of a colour wheel on its own, so worth a punt, I’d say.

Search Press 2008
£9.99

	The Watercolour Wheel Book with John Barber