Textured Art || Melissa McKinnon

In over four decades of writing about art books, this is only the second book I can remember that’s been entirely devoted to the technique of painting with a knife. The first was entirely devoted to oils and very serious indeed, as was the way with such books at the time.

It would not be unfair to say that David & Charles in their current incarnation produce books that are quite elementary and aimed at the more general craft-oriented reader than the committed, more advanced worker. This, therefore, is a project-based book aimed at producing attractive results reasonably quickly. What it is not, however, is superficial and the variety of images and ways of working will be of use to pretty much anyone who works with plastic media and wants to explore methods of impasto in more detail. Although Melissa works here in acrylics, the techniques can easily be applied to oils with no adaptation other than the use of different mediums, and maybe a little more ventilation

Melissa’s subjects are predominantly skies, flowers and trees, but also with some broader landscapes and her images are a great deal more than simple technical exercises that leave you feeling you want more. As well as knives and heavy impasto, she also adds brushwork that softens edges and details and creates recession. The exercises and demonstrations have been photographed in a raking light that reproduces the textures well and there’s never any doubt what’s going on or, for that matter, why. Melissa uses quite a bright palette but, if this isn’t to your taste, any competent artist would be able to adapt quickly.

This is more than a primer and worth waiting those few decades for.

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Passport to Painting || Susie West

This seems to be a year for never-before books. Although there have been previous books on gouache painting, and with coverage of the poster style of work, this is the first I’ve seen that attempts to create classic travel posters.

Strictly speaking, this isn’t a gouache book, as Susie West uses acrylics, but the style is very much that of poster paint (well, it would be), being the use of an opaque medium.

The examples are attractive and fun and there are detailed step-by-step demonstrations if you want to re-create what Susie has done. It shouldn’t take much practice to be able to branch out on your own, though, and I suspect there is more satisfaction to be had from creating retro-style posters of your own favourite places. There’s enough information on landscapes, buildings, water and so on to give you all the groundwork you need.

Is this something to build a portfolio from? Well, it’s attractive and has quite a commercial air, so I suspect that you could have quite a nice business working from other people’s holiday photos. And, with potential Prime Ministers suggesting we all need a side-hustle, why not?

I’ll just leave that, and this, with you.

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Painting Stones || Marion Kaiser

There’s nothing new about painting on stones, and we’ll all have seen faces, animals and geometric designs in many different places. For all that, this is only the second book I’ve seen on the subject, the previous one also coming from Search Press, about thirty years ago.

This is full of ideas and really rather well-executed and I can’t help thinking anyone would be inspired to have a go. The required materials (acrylic paints and brushes) are simple and the surfaces, of course, free.

What is particularly attractive about the approach here is the way Marion adapts the design to the stone in hand. It’s not quite as high-flown as Michelangelo’s advice to find the sculpture in the block, but the principle is not dissimilar.

The book is project-based and each one has simple instructions that, accompanied by clear photographs, are easy to follow. The whole thing is really rather delightful.

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Painting With System 3 || Charles Evans

Daler Rowney’s System 3 is an integrated set of acrylic mediums that includes heavy and soft body paints, inks and fluid colours. The overall palette remains the same across the range and all the parts are designed to work harmoniously together.

Although this is in large part a promotional piece for System 3, sticking with a single range has allowed Charles to produce a complete guide to working with acrylics that covers just about every aspect. He is able to contrast and mix styles and ways of working that would be much more difficult if different brands and types were involved.

The nature of the book means it makes complete sense to start at the absolute beginning, by introducing paints, equipment and supports and then moving on to basic methods of application and demonstrations of subjects that include landscapes, water, animals and buildings.

If you’re starting to paint, this makes an excellent introductory guide and you’ll be working with a range of materials that will be reliable and should produce no nasty surprises. You’ll also be in the hands of an experienced and generous teacher who is not afraid to explain those sometimes elementary details you really need.

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Abstract Painting || Petra Thölken

There was a time when books on abstract painting were rarer than hens’ teeth and a very hard sell indeed. One infamous one rather gloriously had the signature on the rear cover illustration in the top left-hand corner, confirming the old joke about frames needing to be labelled “top” and “bottom”.

Things have changed. If the regular appearance of books is anything to go by (and it should be), everyone wants a piece of the action. It’s not unreasonable, because abstraction, at its best, is about distilling the essence of your subject, then reconstructing it in a way that tells the viewer more than they could get from looking at it themselves. We’ve become so used to loose and impressionistic ways of working which are the first step on this particular road that we’re not just prepared, but willing, to take those further steps.

With plenty of choice, the reader can have their pick of approaches. Given that abstraction is as much a state of mind as anything else, how-to is not the obvious way to come at it and, indeed, step by step demonstrations are rarely offered.

This is a project-based book that does, in fact, offer demonstrations. Do you want to copy someone else’s ideas? Well, if you’re new to all this, it’s as good a starting point as any other. The fact is, abstraction is such a personal thing that it’s entirely up to you to choose the way in that works best for you personally.

To sum up: I can’t review this, other than to say it’s nicely produced. If you like it, buy it.

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The Art of Angela Gaughan

There’s a variety of material in this utterly enthralling book, but by far the majority of it is of wildlife, and that’s what you’d buy it for. I’ve always been surprised by the success in the practical art market of books which deal with such sharp focus and fine detail. I don’t mean to denigrate the skills of amateur artists, but this kind of thing is almost certainly beyond the capabilities of more than a few. The truth is, I suspect, that it’s aspirational and you’d certainly be pleased if you could come up with something even half as good.

Although there are demonstrations here, they aren’t really the focus of the book, which is much more of a masterclass aimed at those who already have quite a lot more than the basic skills. If you can already paint animals, you’ll be glad at the lack of rehearsal of the basics you already know. As far as materials are concerned, Angela works mostly in acrylics.

The results are stunning. Angela absolutely understands form, colouring, posture and behaviour and here it’s not only her creatures that are believable, but their settings and their place in them. It’s true that she works a lot from photographs, but those don’t always give quite the right composition or feature the perfect specimen. The art is to provide what nature intended, rather in the way of the identification guide, which shows a typical rather than exact example.

The majority of the subjects are large wildlife – apes, elephants, big cats – but there are some domestic ones as well as some figurative work that demonstrates similar skills. There’s not enough of this to make it a reason for purchase, but it adds variety and a further dimension.

And now we must turn to the production, which is the jewel in the book’s crown. This is a slightly oversize volume and excellent use has been made of the space, both to showcase finished paintings and to feature details and stages at a good size. The quality of the reproduction is stunning. Angela’s work concentrates on fine detail and every hair and brushstroke are clearly visible. Going through, I started to wonder whether some of the images weren’t quite up to snuff and were perhaps not quite as sharp as they might be. Further inspection showed that this is absolutely not the case and that what I was actually seeing was the texture of the painting surface. Yes, it’s that good.

Only a hundred years ago, colour reproduction was so coarse that you could see the individual dots of ink with the naked eye. Photo litho improved that and then mechanical tolerances in the printing presses themselves allowed much finer register and smaller dots, which you now need a powerful magnifier to see.

For all that, there’s much that can go wrong and choice of paper is a major stumbling block. Search Press’s production department has been at the top of its game for some time, but this surpasses anything I’ve seen, even from more august publishing houses dealing with fine art. That they have achieved this with a cover price of just under £20 is barely credible and you have to suspect witchcraft may be involved! If you’re involved with book production, you should have a copy of this, just to remind yourself of what’s possible. You have nowhere to hide and there are no excuses for anything less.

So, to sum up: an amazing book in every respect.

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Dynamic Seascapes || Judith Yates

Social media gets a bad press. However, it was also responsible for the genesis of this book. The publishers of Leisure Painter and The Artist magazines put one of Judith’s pictures on Twitter. I thought it looked interesting and decided to investigate further. It quickly became apparent that she is one of the best seascape artists I’d seen for a long time, so I suggested that Search Press might like to talk to her. And here, a couple of years later, we are.

Water is one of the hardest subjects to paint. It’s hardly ever static, has no real substance and no colour of its own, yet it presents in many different moods, almost all of them related to movement and surroundings. So, how do you represent that in a single image? Well, that’s what the book is all about. The subtitle is “how to paint seas and skies with drama and energy” and it has that in spades.

Working in watercolour, acrylic, ink and mixed media, Judith will show you how to capture all the forms and moods of the sea, from a calm evening estuary to storm-blown waves breaking on a rocky shore. Although water is the primary subject, Judith does not forget the shorelines, landscapes and of course skies that make up a complete seascape. She’ll show you how light both affects the appearance of water and is affected by it through refraction and reflection. She’ll also demonstrate ways of capturing the solid appearance of a breaking wave and how to create the sense of power and movement that are essential to giving your image a feeling of being anything but static and two-dimensional.

There are plenty of examples, exercises and demonstrations as well as explanations of the way water behaves in just about every situation. The book is every bit as exciting as its subject.

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Expressive Abstracts in Acrylic || Anita Hörskens

It seems now to be traditional that books on abstract painting are project based and this useful guide is no exception. The main reason, I suspect, is that it’s very hard to teach the creative aspect of the topic. The basic principle is that you extract or abstract the essence of your subject and portray it in a way that tells the viewer how you felt about it and what it was like to be there in the moment. How far you take this is entirely up to you – there may be quite a few recognisable shapes and forms, or perhaps none at all. You may be wishing to express a mood rather than a sense of place, for instance.

All this is rather esoteric, but it’s something to consider before embarking on the process. What you can teach, of course, is techniques and that’s what this guide aims to do in the fifty-five featured projects. You’ll have the opportunity to experiment with colour, contrast, glazing, composition, negative shapes and paint pouring as well as exploring materials and surfaces. There’s a lot to get to grips with and the simple exercises that are presented give you plenty of examples to work with as well as ways to add your own personal touch – the instructions are concise and allow for plenty of interpretation, which is, after all, the name of the game in this field.

There are other guides that offer a similar approach, but this one is about as comprehensive as it gets.

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Ready to Paint in 30 Minutes – Landscapes in Acrylics || Barry Herniman

There’s something for everyone in this welcome addition to an excellent series. Barry covers trees, rocks, buildings, water, skies and even seas. Demonstrations use the watercolour technique, so you’ll be working on paper without impasto. I’ve yet to see traceable outlines that work on canvas, though I can’t see why it would be impossible.

This isn’t just a good book within the series, though, it’s a very thorough grounding in landscape elements and techniques in its own right and something to consider even if you don’t want pre-drawn outlines.

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Acrylic Paint Pouring || Tanja Jung

I’ll admit that paint pouring, which is allegedly “the latest technique to take the art world by storm” leaves me cold. This time next year, will we be looking back and wondering what it was all about? I think we will.

However, if you want to be taken by storm and are thinking of dipping your toe in the water, you won’t find a better introduction than this. Quite rightly, no previous knowledge is assumed and there are clear explanations of materials, working methods and – crucially – what happens and why. To achieve control, you really do need to understand your materials and preparation counts for a lot, saving countless messy and potentially costly mistakes.

The core of the book is a series of sixteen straightforward projects, each disposed of in four pages. These get you practising techniques as well as discovering creativity; the lack of complication and over-thinking mean you’re never going to feel lost. There’s no point in simply learning to follow paint-by-numbers instructions – you’re always going to be wanting to branch out on your own, which you’ll be ready to when you’ve finished here.

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