This series just gets better and better. Having been through the main media and also colour mixing, it’s now getting down to subjects. The editorial team at the originators, Quarto, have the illustrated book down to a fine art and they can convey more in one double-page spread than many others do in a whole chapter. The result is that you get information in a format that’s easy to understand and absorb without being dumbed down. Sure, you can find more comprehensive, more learned books on flower painting (one of the most published subjects there is), but you won’t get half this information in such a concise form.
What you do get is a thoroughly comprehensive guide to flower painting divided into three sections. The first is Materials and Techniques, fairly comprehensive and the one which the more experienced artist might want to skip over. After that, there are demonstrations grouped by flower shapes and then a directory of flowers, arranged by colour. This last makes sense because, as artists, we tend to think of flowers in terms of their colour rather than families or botanical names. It just feels more logical and this is typical of the sort of sense that pervades the book. It’s one you’re going to feel at home with quite quickly and you’re not going to be forever turning the pages over to try to find what you’re looking for.
Like all the others in the series, it’s spiral bound, so it stays flat when you open it.
Search Press 2008
£12.99
Artbookreview.net 