This new series from Search Press concentrates on the absolute basics and assumes very little prior knowledge on the part of the reader. It’s one stage on from those omnibus “how to paint everything in every medium” books that are – or claim to be – an even more elementary introduction for the general reader. Some of them are good, but a lot are aimed at people who know someone who “wants to paint” and assume that a fat, suspiciously inexpensive, tome is the way forward. That the recipient probably never gets further than the first 20 or so pages and one half-completed watercolour means that their real value is never really tested.
I’m sorry, we seem to have got a bit off-topic there and I should add there are some really quite good big fat introductions around that are the ideal starting point for someone who’s reasonably serious but hasn’t got as far as deciding which is their medium yet.
But, back to our sheep [revenons à nos moutons, as they say sur le continent]. If you’ve got as far as browsing this series on the shelves, you’ve also got as far as making a decision on which medium you’re going to pursue and that’s the first rung up the ladder. So, we’ll assume that you know what a brush is and what paints are, but that you don’t really have much experience in using them. And this is where this series comes in. There’s a very good section on materials and media that will show you the basics of colour mixing and brushstrokes and then a series of 3 fairly straightforward demonstration paintings that will get you started.
64 pages isn’t enough to offer an exhaustive study, but the point is not to bog you down, but to give you something to achieve reasonably quickly so that you can move on with a sense of something already achieved.
Artbookreview.net 