Breaking The Rules of Watercolour || Shirley Trevena

When I wrote about Shirley Trevena’s previous book, Vibrant Watercolours, I had a riff about how watercolour was supposed to be a demure medium. I won’t repeat it here, but my point was that Shirley had taken a traditional medium by the scruff of the neck and brought it right up to date. It was therefore a pleasure to read the introduction to this rather magnificent new volume and discover that this is basically her manifesto. The quote, “I would love to have had [Queen Victoria] in my class so that I could have given her permission to let rip with her colours” conjures up a wonderful image!

And that’s basically what this book is about, what the rules and the risks are: colours, but also how they sit together and relate to each other through positive and negative shapes. Shirley isn’t an abstract painter and, if you turn the pages, you’ll never be in any doubt about what any of her subjects is, but you can immediately see that it’s all about much more than just representation. Conveniently, the cover illustration makes my point. The title is Scottish Waterlilies, but that really doesn’t matter. You need to look at the way the colours are placed, how the pink of the flower stands out against the green leaves, and how the deep blue of the negative shapes of the water defines all the rest of the elements of the picture. The result is bold and yet subtle at the same time.

The structure of the book is that Shirley analyses ten of her paintings, using each one to make a specific point: “More paint, bigger paper”, “Breaking the rules of perspective”, “Happy accidents”. She’ll show you where the idea came from and how the image was developed, what colours and materials were used and how the effects were achieved. There isn’t a demonstration in sight, though, and if you were looking for instruction on how to copy the piece, you’d search in vain because this isn’t a book that will teach you how to paint, it’s a book that’ll teach you about painting, about how to see, how to think and how to translate that into working with the materials you have. It’s a difficult thing to pull off because most artists think visually and have great trouble expressing themselves in words. Shirley, though, has the gift for both and this is a book which will teach you more about art than pretty much any other.

It also helps that it’s been superbly produced and is a joy just to handle.

Making Color Sing || Jeanne Dobie

It’s really only the typeface of this anniversary reissue of what ought to be a classic that suggests that the book is 25 years old, and even then, you’d probably need to have a bit of a design background to spot it.

Jeanne Dobie’s work makes heavy use of washes and granulation and remains as fresh to modern eyes as when it first appeared. The book is about using subtle colour and is characteristic of the New England school (I’m not sure what part of the US she comes from), which has a climate that promotes a style more like English than continental watercolours, and this has much to do with why the book has been so popular.

The emphasis throughout is on experimentation and discovery and is an absolute must for anyone wanting to paint classic landscapes.




The Watercolourist’s Guide to Exceptional Colour || Jan Hart

This is a reissue of The Encyclopaedia of Colour for Watercolour Artists that first appeared in 2007. You have to hunt around a bit for that information, but we won’t dock any points as they’ve been honest. Although it has UK origins, there’s an American feel, the author is American and you can’t help suspect it was originally conceived for that market. There’s nothing wrong in that, but you might want to be aware that some of the colours are quite bright and the portraits, landscapes and buildings have a transatlantic air.

All that said, it went down well on its original appearance and the book has a pleasantly straightforward approach to a slightly nebulous subject that the author manages to pin down rather successfully.

The basic premise is to help you choose what colours are best for your style of painting from the hundreds (even thousands) available, selecting from single-pigments to pre-mixed hues as well as those which granulate, those which are most transparent and a selection of the opaques. All this is done by means of simple spreads with example paintings which are explained and deconstructed with an analysis of the colours that were used. The progression is subject-based, so this isn’t one of those books that straitjackets you into choosing your colours before you start to paint, surely one of the most pointless exercises there is.

The almost complete lack of step-by-step demonstrations will please many readers and the book has a pleasant feel of serendipity about it as you flick through the pages. It’s something to have around you and dip into for ideas rather than something to read through as an instruction manual, and all the better for that.

Buy it on Amazon


Color Harmonies – paint watercolors filled with light || Rose Edin & Dee Jepsen

“Don’t settle for colours that just sit there. Inspired by the work of the great Impressionists, Color Harmonies shows you how to use analagous colors (colors next to each other on the color wheel) and their complements to achieve lively, glowing effects.”

This is a book that pretty much describes itself, even if the jacket blurb appears to have been written in an obscure dialect that only bears a passing appearance of being English.

The principle of colour harmony, that is to say, using colours that sit well together, is one of the basic principles of painting and is a lot older than Impressionism. I’m always suspicious of books that liken themselves to the Impressionists because they’re taking one of the most influential art movements of all and trying to give themselves greatness by association. Sorry guys, just do it well and let others make the comparison.

OK, so having got that off my chest, I’m pleased to say that whoever wrote the blurb didn’t also write the book, which explains basic colour theory in a way that the artist rather than the physicist will understand. Follow the authors through a series of examples, sample colour swatches and demonstrations and you’ll find you have a good grounding in the way colour works on the palette and on paper and paintings that have a serenity and an appeal.

http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=artbookreview-21&o=2&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&md=0M5A6TN3AXP2JHJBWT02&asins=1600611923

Design & Colour in Watercolour || Michelle Scragg

I have to admit that I’m struggling to work out quite how the Design bit comes into this. Michelle Scragg paints in a style that’s just a step away from representation and she uses blocks of bold and often solid colour that would certainly lend themselves to fabric design, which appears in fact to be her main interest. However, in spite of the hint at this in the subtitle, this is a painting book and has to be judged as such.

There is also a problem because, for a book on colour, it lacks brilliance. I’ve gone through it in some detail and, although it’s consistent throughout, I can’t help feeling that it’s badly let down by the quality of the reproduction. One of two of the illustrations aren’t sharp and a lot of the others are of suspiciously high contrast, which doesn’t seem to go with the chosen medium. Others seem muddy and there is a suspicion that areas which should be white are coming out as grey. There doesn’t seem to be any suggestion that Michelle has adopted a novel way of mixing and applying paint, and I’m not sure that it would be possible to obtain the end result in this way anyway. I have a horrible feeling that she’s supplied the publisher with less than perfect transparencies, or possibly colour prints rather than originals or good quality digital images. This is a major let-down because it simply distracts from anything she might be trying to say. There are some good ideas here and, while they are probably of limited appeal to the general watercolourist, they do offer a novel approach and a welcome bridge between the strictly representational and the purely abstract.

I’m stuck. If this is how it’s meant to appear, then I’ve simply missed the point and I apologise, but I have a horrible feeling it isn’t. There’s no doubt that there are some good ideas here and, if you can see through to them, then this is a book which should and will excite you.

http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?t=artbookreview-21&o=2&p=8&l=as1&asins=1906388040&md=0M5A6TN3AXP2JHJBWT02&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr


Collins Artist's Little Book Of Colour || Simon Jennings

Simon Jennings’ original Artist’s Colour Manual was a tour de force of total immersion that celebrated, indeed wallowed in, what is the artist’s lingua franca, colour. It wasn’t just a list of facts or a blow-by-blow account of how to mix any shade you could possibly want. By telling you nothing, of course, it told you everything.

I suppose this pocket sized volume had to come, but it’s a reductio ad absurdum with all the character of its bigger brother taken out. If you want a list of colour facts and a handy index to what most of the popular colours from most of the main manufacturers look like straight out of the tube, well, this is the book you’ve been waiting all those years for. It’ll tell you everything and, in doing so, it’ll tell you nothing.

I’m not one of those people who say that colour mixing should be instinctive and can’t be taught, or one of those others who says that facts are useless in this context and that you should just concentrate on artistic interpretation. I will shout that, “knowledge is power”, “the truth shall make you free” from the rooftops, but “the facts, ma’am, just the facts” won’t help you at all and there’s nothing in this book to tell you what to do with all this new-found information; that’s what the original book was all about.

The main selling pitch from the back cover is: “Did you know that Ultramarine Blue was originally made from ground-up lapis lazuli or that both yellow and green once contained arsenic?”. Well, yes I did and I also know that Cochineal used to be made from ground-up beetles but, do you know what?, I don’t care. Even if I didn’t know, I wouldn’t be looking around for a book to tell me.

There’s a traditional Christmas market in books that contain useless information and it’s just a pity that this one is dressed up as being somehow useful to the artist. Start a “what I don’t want for Christmas” list now and put this right at the top, just in case someone has the misguided idea of buying it for you.

Collins 2007
£8.99

http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?t=artbookreview-21&o=2&p=8&l=as1&asins=0007266367&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

The Encyclopaedia Of Colour For Watercolour Artists || Jan Hart

The Encyclopaedia series first saw the light of day over 20 years ago and many of the original titles are still in print. So why the longevity and has it dated? I think a lot of the success is down to an eclectic choice of material and a slightly scattergun approach which gives an instant appeal; they’re books that, on first glance, make you feel you want to delve deeper into them and that’s what sells to the casual buyer who’s picked one up in a shop.

The square format helps too. It’s unusual because publishers generally feel it has a not-one-thing-or-the-other feel, but it works here because it means that both upright and landscape format illustrations can get equal billing. It also allows the designers a lot of flexibility in page layout which they use enthusiastically. No two pages are exactly alike and the layout reflects the material to be presented rather than it being shoe-horned into a grid that no-one seems to be able to break out of. Once again, this is unusual because it means a lot more work and a lot more potential cost, something publishers shy away from like a plague of, well, anything you can have a plague of, basically.

Well, what a lot of innovation and we haven’t even got to what the book’s about yet! There’s more, too, because this is a welcome break from a positive deluge of colour guides and encyclopaedias that are basically just collections of colour swatches. These are fine in their place and have sold in just about every size, flavour and colour, but what about colour in practice in, like, y’know, a painting? Well hallelujah, here it is! After a broad introduction to colour groups, this book moves out into an exploration of how the colours of the paint you use apply to capturing the colour you see in the scene in front of you. By explaining these groups and presenting a series of projects, demonstrations and analyses Jan Hart breaks the use of colour down in a way that’s pretty easy to understand.

This is a serendipitous sort of book, one to dip into as well as maybe to work through, a repository of little as well as larger treasures that act like beams of light into a world that many find complex, even though it is, when all’s said and done the lingua franca of the artist. Did I mention increased costs earlier? Well, you wouldn’t know it because, at £12.99, they’re practically giving it away. Me, I’d have printed it on thicker paper, stuck a hard cover on it and charged double, but don’t tell them that.

Search Press 2007
£12.99

http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?t=artbookreview-21&o=2&p=8&l=as1&asins=1844482936&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

Raw Colour With Pastels || Mark Leach

Pastel is the nearest thing you’ll get to pure colour and it’s therefore surprising that no one has approached the subject of colour through this medium before. While a lot of books on colour tend to concentrate on the theory, Mark, by being practical, approaches it from the painter’s point of view.

Painting is, in the end, all about colour. Even the simplest, most representational image, is meaningless if the colours aren’t right. However, colour can do a lot more because emphases and distortions can guide and influence the viewer’s eye. It’s how the artist, without words, makes their personal comment on the subject portrayed.

In a thoroughly comprehensive approach, Mark shows you how to use colour as a medium in itself to depict landscapes of all kinds. Not one of his paintings is directly representational in any conventional sense, and yet they are all immediately recognisable, either as types or locations and the sense of place is quite remarkably strong. It’s not abstraction, for here, shape would play a different part; Mark’s shapes are colour shapes, blocks that define the image, or a part of it, and which attract, manipulate or startle the viewer into looking at things in a specific way.

I said that this is a practical book and that means that Mark explains in considerable detail how he works; it’s an instructional approach. However, this isn’t a book about how to paint in pastel and anyone looking for that would be disappointed. In fact, Mark transcends any specific medium and this is a book you should probably read whatever medium you work in because the basic ideas and principles can be applied universally. It’ll make you think and that’s what you want, isn’t it?

First published 2006
£17.99

http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?t=artbookreview-21&o=2&p=8&l=as1&asins=0713489995&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr