Archive for category Subject: Fruit & Vegetables
Flowers, Fruit & Vegetables || Giovanni Civardi
Posted by henry in Author: Giovanni Civardi, Medium: Drawing, Publisher: Search Press, Subject: Flowers, Subject: Fruit & Vegetables, Subject: Still life on September 29, 2011
Subtitled “Simple approaches to drawing natural forms”, this is an excellent primer in capturing the subtleties and characteristics of botanical subjects.
Giovanni Civardi uses very few words after the initial introduction and some notes of perspective, composition and botanical anatomy. He teaches by example rather than instruction, which makes the book very easy to follow as long as you have a reasonable grasp of the basics.
The beautiful and delicate pencil drawings that make up the body of the book demonstrate how to use line, shading and hatching to record form and shape, and the book is a total delight from start to finish.
Radiant Oils || Arleta Peach
Posted by henry in Author: Arleta Peach, Medium: Oil, Publisher: North Light, Subject: Flowers, Subject: Fruit & Vegetables on February 2, 2010
The bulk of this book is devoted to that peculiarly American phenomenon, the floral. This is a formalised still life of flowers, almost always with a cut-glass vase and often also a lace table cloth. It’s a style of painting I suspect you either love or loathe, although I also suspect that, in the right market, they’d be highly saleable. As a bit of variety, this also includes some fruit, which does tend to push it into the category of still life, rather than the purely floral.
It’s not really possible to recommend this as a flower painting book because it’s so specialised, but the demonstrations are well done and contain much useful and practical advice, particularly on glazing. If this is a style you think you might like to explore, then it’s a must. Otherwise, there is useful information to be gleaned, but you might find the pickings rather lean for the price.
Watercolour Fruit & Vegetable Portraits || Billy Showell
Posted by henry in Author: Billy Showell, Medium: Watercolour, Publisher: Search Press, Subject: Fruit & Vegetables, Subject: Still life on March 19, 2009
On the face of it, this seems a pretty unlikely idea for a book. I mean, I can see the attraction of flower portraits, obviously, but the ingredients for soup? On the other hand, when you see the really rather beautiful results that Billy gets, it’s ten to one you’re going to want to have a go yourself. However, if it wasn’t done as well as it is here, I still contend that you’d lower your gaze and hurry on by.
But no matter. The greengrocer’s stock in trade provides a wealth of colour and texture and something you, as an artist, can really get your teeth into (yes, yes, I know, but you should see the ones that got edited out!) and there are some really serious exercises in watercolour virtuosity here. Clearly, this is not a book aimed at the beginner and all of the introductory material is written for the experienced artist who just needs a little guidance in what’s required for this specific subject matter – there’s none of the elementary how-to-paint stuff that plagues so many books. It’s nice to be treated as a grown-up for once and this is undoubtedly going to make you well-disposed towards the author before you even get started and that can’t be a bad thing. After that, it’s straight into the subject matter with a nicely varied chapter on drawing a wide range of different shaped vegetables and fruit. From here, it’s on to composition though, as this is a book of portraits (that is to say, the bare subject without any real context) this tends toward some sometimes slightly bizarre arrangements, the value of which I’m not totally sure of. However, this is a bit of a quibble, because the next chapter is about colour and this is really valuable as it deals with shades you may well not have encountered before and Billy offers some excellently clear advice that’s likely to be useful in all your work, not just this specialised area. There’s a lot more on light and shade, dealing with white vegetables, flowers and details before a set of projects where Billy demonstrates four subjects in some detail.
If you’re tired of the same old subjects and you fancy something that’s really going to challenge your abilities as a painter, then this is undoubtedly the book for you. I don’t think it’s going to turn you into a fruit and veg specialist and you may well feel that, when you’ve tried it, that’s quite enough, thank you, but I don’t think you’ll feel it was an exercise that wasn’t worthwhile.
