Line & Wash Painting || Liz Chaderton

Crowood have carved out a rather neat niche in collaboration with Liz. Her books are quite small format and relatively short, but absolutely packed with information and illustrations.

Line & wash is a subject that’s been crying out for a book for absolutely ages and this one will not disappoint. Liz covers a huge variety of subjects, styles, materials and techniques with a thoroughness which doesn’t seem possible in the limited space she allows. What makes the book particularly interesting is how she isn’t afraid to sublimate the line element, which usually dominates, instead sometimes relegating it almost to just highlights in what is otherwise largely a watercolour wash.

You’ll find landscapes, buildings, portraits and animals and styles that range from the traditional to results that are more akin to printmaking and sometimes even veer towards abstraction.

Traditionally, the line element defines the outline, with the wash being an infill. Here, Liz does not allow herself to be bound by these constraints, either technically or creatively and this is a powerhouse of a book hiding in a small space.

Click the picture to view on Amazon

Painting Animals in Watercolour || Liz Chaderton

This is a small and slim volume and you would be forgiven for thinking it can’t have much to say. Look inside, though, and there’s a remarkable amount of variety, both in subject matter as well as approaches and techniques. The secret is some really rather nifty design work that allows the maximum number of illustrations with a text that’s mainly there to point you in the right direction. If you wanted proof of the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, this is it.

So, you’ll find birds and animals – both wild and domestic – and an imaginative use of colour that perfectly suits Liz’s loose, painterly style. There’s not a lot about anatomy and structure beyond some basic information, but this is a book about interpretation rather than necessarily strict detailed representation. If the subjects were flowers, this would not be botanical illustration.

Basically, it’s not so much a book about animals as a book about how to paint animals that have presence and character. It’s not a complete course, although it’s a lot more thorough than you’d think and a genuinely worthwhile addition to the bookshelf.

Click the picture to view on Amazon