En Plein Air Light & Color || Iain Stewart

This accessible and enjoyable guide is as good as you’re going to get on working from nature. The subject matter is varied and includes landscapes, buildings, boats, flowers and people, the work being conducted in a loose style that relies heavily on washes. Despite being American, the tonal values are generally insular rather than continental – that’s to say, colours are as subtle and muted as we’d expect on this side of the Atlantic, rather than the sometimes over-bright tones that characterise the light in a larger land mass.

The approach is via discussions and demonstrations and there’s more text than is sometimes the case in books of this kind. The stages work from palette selection to outline drawing and through to the finished painting and are well-described and illustrated.

There is, however, a major drawback. The paper chosen tends to swallow the colours and the images are simply too coarse, meaning that detail, particularly in some of the pencil work, can be hard to see and interpret. This is a shame, as it detracts from what would otherwise be an excellent book. If you can overlook it, however, this won’t disappoint.

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Artist Toolbox: Tools & Materials/Surfaces & Supports

This handy little series offers a lot more than appears at first sight. You would be forgiven for thinking that it was something aimed at the complete beginner and maybe even for the buying-it-for-someone-else market.

Although it is both of these – if you know someone who’s expressed an interest in art, these are a good starting point – there’s also information that will provide a handy resumé for the more experienced worker. The contents are much more than just a list of what’s available with the sort of description that leaves you muttering, “well, I could have worked that out for myself”.

What separates these books from the crowd is the amount of information (packed into a very small space) about what to do with the equipment you’ve just bought. Oils, watercolours, acrylics and ink are there, of course, but also glass, plastic and even stone. Technical information runs to shading, perspective and composition as well as the more expected methods of application. Within that limited space, don’t expect a full-on course, but do be amazed by the amount of depth achieved in only a page or two.

These are genuinely useful books that have been well thought out and are very much more than just the shelf-fillers that this sort of thing so often is.

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