Keith Fenwick is a popular and generous teacher who has an achievable style, giving his students that killer combination of “I want to paint that” as well as “I could paint that”.
This is not his first sally into print, but he does benefit here from a editor who has formed his text into a series of extended captions, giving the book a more accessible step by step rather than a discursive approach.
The In A Weekend concept is one which David & Charles have used extensively to considerable effect and what it does is to reduce things to a manageable level and put a timescale onto a project, rather than having it run open-ended for ever. The purist in you is probably by now screaming that art is a lifetime’s study and that you can’t possibly learn even a tiny fraction of it in a weekend. And you’re right, but this idea of something finite offers hope to the beginner who may just be wondering where on earth to start in such a massive subject, and that’s no bad thing.
So, leaving the cosmetics aside, is this, of itself, a good book on acrylic landscape painting? I’d have to say that it is. All the basic techniques you’re going to need are there and they’re put in a context where they’re practical rather than just theory: you’ll learn them in the course of a painting, not on a sketchpad. This approach gives you results quickly, but it needs a good teacher because the risk of failure and of discouragement is greater. Keith is too canny to let that happen, and that’s what really makes the book a success.
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