30 Minute Flowers in Watercolour || Trevor Waugh

This is not, you might have guessed, an in-depth guide to flower painting. Rather, Trevor Waugh uses the limitations of this rather excellent series to good effect, producing instead a book that concentrates on the look and shape of flowers rather than their every detail. As an introduction, it’s effective because it doesn’t get bogged down and the reader will find a lot of useful information that will help to put flowers in a painting rather than making them the main subject in themselves. If you then want to go on to greater, or at least more intricate, things, there are plenty of books which will take you all the way to botanical illustration.

	30 Minute Flowers In Watercolour with Trevor Waugh

30 Minute People in Watercolour || Trevor Waugh

In the way that Trevor Waugh’s other book in this series deals more with flowers in the landscape than as subjects in themselves, so this is much more about populating a painting than it is about portraiture. It’s not possible, of course, to do a detailed portrait in the timescale set by the title and Trevor doesn’t attempt to, rather concentrating on people as a series of shapes and colours that bring life to a landscape or townscape. He’s got some good tips on both posture and movement and, although it’s simply written this is really much more than a basic introduction to figure drawing.

	30 Minute People in Watercolour Book with Trevor Waugh

30 Minute Landscapes in Watercolour || Paul Talbot-Greaves

Now that this series is branching into subjects rather than media, its strengths are becoming more apparent. It’s not possible to deal with a subject comprehensively in a book of this size, nor is it possible to create a highly detailed painting in the timescale the titles imply, and that’s the whole point. These are very much overviews that provide easily followed introductions based on results rather than lengthy demonstrations.

Paul Talbot-Greaves has a pleasant, loose style that is well suited to the quick sketch and he manages to pack a lot into a short space including colour, tone, skies, mountains, water and buildings.

	30 Minute Landscapes in Watercolour Book with Paul Talbot-Greaves

30 Minute Pastels || Margaret Evans

This series is shaping up to be an excellent way of looking at a variety of media (and it’s to be hoped that it will move on to subject-based titles in the fullness of time) from a fresh viewpoint.

The idea of the timed painting is not a new one and, handled without thought, it can be little more than a gimmick. However, what it does do is make you concentrate on the subject rather than the mechanics of recording it; you can’t fuss over details or the oven timer rings and you’ve got to stop. If this was just an excuse to produce yet another series of basic media introductions, I’d greet it with a hearty yawn. There’s an awful of that kind of thing out there and, trust me, a lot of them really are awful. However, as well as encouraging the reader to look at things in a new light, the same process seems to have transferred itself to the authors (and Collins have been rather smart in their choice of artists for the series) and what you get is a catalogue of neat, quick and fresh ideas that should appeal as much to the more experienced artist as to the beginner. This is a neat trick, because this kind of thing is usually aimed at those starting out.

Collins 2008
£7.99

	30 Minute Pastels Book with Margaret Evans

30 Minute Sketching || Alwyn Crawshaw

This series is shaping up to be an excellent way of looking at a variety of media (and it’s to be hoped that it will move on to subject-based titles in the fullness of time) from a fresh viewpoint.

The idea of the timed painting is not a new one and, handled without thought, it can be little more than a gimmick. However, what it does do is make you concentrate on the subject rather than the mechanics of recording it; you can’t fuss over details or the oven timer rings and you’ve got to stop. If this was just an excuse to produce yet another series of basic media introductions, I’d greet it with a hearty yawn. There’s an awful of that kind of thing out there and, trust me, a lot of them really are awful. However, as well as encouraging the reader to look at things in a new light, the same process seems to have transferred itself to the authors (and Collins have been rather smart in their choice of artists for the series) and what you get is a catalogue of neat, quick and fresh ideas that should appeal as much to the more experienced artist as to the beginner. This is a neat trick, because this kind of thing is usually aimed at those starting out.

Collins 2008
£7.99

	30 Minute Sketching Book with Alwyn Crawshaw

30 Minute Acrylics || Soraya French

The idea of the quick painting is that it teaches you to see and work quickly, visualising your subject in a short time and then getting it down on paper or canvas with a minimum of fiddling and thus retaining the freshness of what attracted you in the first place. “Sketching, in other words”, I hear from the back. Well, yes, but only up to a point, because sketching doesn’t actually have a time limit and you can spend hours recording a series of quite small details that are notes to a later work; a sketch is not necessarily a painting in itself.

Overdone, this quick-working technique can lead you into bad habits (“30 minutes, bah, I’ll give you The 10-Minute Watercolour”) and sloppy working where the timing is more important than the result. However, sensitively handled, it can teach you to take in a scene almost at a glance, to concentrate on the subject that attracted you in the first place and not to worry about (and at) all the details that surround it. Many artists have had a go at it, from Edward Wesson’s varnishing brush or Ron Ranson’s hake, both big brushes that provided the broad stroke and defied fiddling, and it’s a valuable teaching aid. I also suspect that it’s an excuse for publishers to come up with a series of small books that don’t obviously duplicate all the other small books that are out there. Cynical? Moi?

What you get here is a series of ideas and executions that stand out for their simplicity and freshness. Did they all take exactly half an hour? Well, frankly, am I bovvered? These are images with a minimum of detail, the painting equivalent of a good spring clean or some decluttering. It’s a book to flick through and stop when you see something that makes you go, “ooh”, or just at random. For something so simple, you’ll be surprised if I say it probably has more for the experienced painter than the beginner, just because it’s a way of blowing out the cobwebs and stimulating new ideas rather than a manual.

It’s fresh and it’s interesting. Don’t expect a clearly structured course of instruction, or even a list of ideas. Do expect to be intrigued, maybe surprised, and certainly stimulated.

Collins 2007
£7.99

	30 Minute Acrylics Book with Soraya French

30 Minute Watercolours || Fiona Peart

The idea of the quick painting is that it teaches you to see and work quickly, visualising your subject in a short time and then getting it down on paper or canvas with a minimum of fiddling and thus retaining the freshness of what attracted you in the first place. “Sketching, in other words”, I hear from the back. Well, yes, but only up to a point, because sketching doesn’t actually have a time limit and you can spend hours recording a series of quite small details that are notes to a later work; a sketch is not necessarily a painting in itself.

Overdone, this quick-working technique can lead you into bad habits (“30 minutes, bah, I’ll give you The 10-Minute Watercolour”) and sloppy working where the timing is more important than the result. However, sensitively handled, it can teach you to take in a scene almost at a glance, to concentrate on the subject that attracted you in the first place and not to worry about (and at) all the details that surround it. Many artists have had a go at it, from Edward Wesson’s varnishing brush or Ron Ranson’s hake, both big brushes that provided the broad stroke and defied fiddling, and it’s a valuable teaching aid. I also suspect that it’s an excuse for publishers to come up with a series of small books that don’t obviously duplicate all the other small books that are out there. Cynical? Moi?

What you get here is a series of ideas and executions that stand out for their simplicity and freshness. Did they all take exactly half an hour? Well, frankly, am I bovvered? These are images with a minimum of detail, the painting equivalent of a good spring clean or some decluttering. It’s a book to flick through and stop when you see something that makes you go, “ooh”, or just at random. For something so simple, you’ll be surprised if I say it probably has more for the experienced painter than the beginner, just because it’s a way of blowing out the cobwebs and stimulating new ideas rather than a manual.

It’s fresh and it’s interesting. Don’t expect a clearly structured course of instruction, or even a list of ideas. Do expect to be intrigued, maybe surprised, and certainly stimulated.

Collins 2007
£7.99

	30 Minute Watercolours Book with Fiona Peart