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
Artbookreview.net 