Archive for category Author: Julie Gilbert Pollard
Watercolor Unleashed || Julie Gilbert Pollard
Posted by Henry in Author: Julie Gilbert Pollard, Medium: Watercolour, Publisher: North Light, Subject: Techniques on Mar 11, 2013
Subtitled “New directions for traditional painting techniques”, there’s an immediate attractiveness to this that invites further study. The blurb adds, “This book is all about painting boldly, embracing the medium’s unpredictable nature, and achieving a loose, painterly quality” and I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Beyond that, it’s quite hard to pin down what the book is actually about. I suppose the best thing I can say is that, if you’re feeling stuck in a rut and in need of new ideas or a kick-start, this will provide it. The subjects are mostly landscapes, waterscapes and flowers and what Julie Pollard is particularly strong on is the use of colour and of negative shapes. She also has a style that tends towards abstraction, but at the same time keeping a foot firmly in the representational camp.
I find the whole thing completely refreshing, which is what it says it wants to be. Spot on.
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Brilliant Color || Julie Gilbert Pollard
Posted by Henry in Author: Julie Gilbert Pollard, Medium: Acrylic, Medium: Oil, Publisher: North Light, Subject: Landscape on Jan 20, 2009
It’s difficult, from a first impression, to say what this book is about. That’s not a criticism, because bright, colourful outdoor paintings are always attractive and there’s an immediate sense of, “I’d like to do that”. I’d like to say it falls into the category of books about colour, but it’s not really that, even though the cover blurb tells us that it, “Reveals a new way of thinking about colour empowering you to push the envelope beyond ordinary realism into bold landscapes full of life and energy”. Well, yes, up to a point, although the impression from the illustrations is mainly one of not using sombre colours which could best be summed up in the advice, “Don’t use sombre colours. And don’t overdo the mixing”.
However, as I said, the results are attractive and, if you want to paint sunny, cheerful outdoor scenes in oil or acrylic, then this book is, at the very least going to encourage you. There are plenty of stages in the step-by-step demonstrations and the text is clearly and economically written without any of the over-philosophising that can bedevil this kind of book and which is perhaps threatened in what I quoted above.
I said it was difficult to say what this was about. Does that matter? It provides a good introduction to outdoor painting in oils and acrylics and does its job well. Do you want any more than that?
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