Art
Book Reviews
cont.,
Another Franny Moyle book is Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites. This was made into a BBC series that I seemed to have missed. Maybe I'll have to track that down. I had a thing for the PR Brotherhood and it was nice to visit some of the paintings at Tate Britain again on my last trip. They certainly had quite interesting love lives along with their art.
A YouTube subscriber recommended books by Franny Moyle to me. And I knew I would like to read more about Turner and you just have to love a title like The Extraordinary Life and Momentous Times of J.M.W. Turner. Often with great artists you mostly hear about the art and technique rather than the person. This weighty tome takes care of that.
The Foreign Invention of British Art by Leslie Primo highlights the foreign artists who made their home or had a spent part of their career in the UK or benefitting from the patronage of British collectors. However, it was the UK itself that benefited from these artists who brought the skills of the Renaissance to the shores of Great Britain. Without them British art would've looked quite different.
I loved this book and I'm kind of jealous of her proximity to nature. Caroline Ross' Drawn from the Wild gives you step by step instructions on how to make your own media from your natural surroundings. There's how to make pastels, crayons, charcoal and reed pens etc. She shows your examples of her work and work of contemporary and historic artists in the same media that she highlights. Well worth getting. There is a previous book call Found and Ground that I will have to look for and of course there will be a review for that. I think I may be purchasing this one for my library.
I often read Grahame Booth's articles in the magazines The Artist and Artist and Illustrator but once again, my husband beat me to it and got this out of the library for me. Plein Air Painting with Watercolours (and remember it is pronounced "plen" like then) opens with the usual things to consider like equipment and theory such as composition and perspective. The next section takes a seasonal approach with step by step guides to how he painted scenes that you can follow along and try for yourself. He has a very light touch that is wonderful.
Jessie Kanelos Weiner will have you illustrating your life and your surroundings day by day in Thinking in Watercolour. She's start you off with some basics but really it is about seeing your surroundings and life as a subject for your watercolours. It's really a month's long lesson plan that will start you on the road to watercolour or loosen you up if you've got stuck and are searching for ideas.
As you probably know since you've got this far on my website, I make my own watercolour. However, I use pigments for this. Joanne Green in Natural Watercolor Paint Making shows you how to make your own pigments using vegetables and other foraged or natural elements. Red cabbage will give you a blue colour but red onions will give you a lovely green. Fascinating stuff.
Do you just want to sit back and look at some lovely watercolours especially of chairs then Watercolours by Hans J. Wegner the Danish furniture designer might be just the ticket. I love images of chairs so it is right up my street. He often completed his designs using watercolour. However there are also illustrations of room designs, lighting fixtures, wallpaper and landscapes to feast your eyes on.
Thought notebooks always existed? Or maybe you have a pile of notebooks sitting around only partially used or not at all. Maybe you need to read The Notebook:: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen and see how some of the greats used them including artists like Leonardo or Frida Kahlo. I know some of my sketchbooks are a mixture of notebook and sketches.
This is a series of 15 minute Art books with this one focussing on Drawing. The author Jessica Smith lays out the book in a series of very simple projects (50) for the novice. There are even templates at the back of the book if your drawing skills aren't quite there yet. The artist tends to use markers combined with coloured pencil for the projects so quite simple to start you on your drawing adventure.
As you've probably guessed this is another book in the series of 15 Minute Art featuring Painting. As with the previous book it is presented as short little projects that you could easily follow and do in 15 minutes. And, again, if your drawing isn't up to snuff then there are templates at the back of the book. This is a bit more challenging than the drawing projects but very easy to start for the novice. Hannah Podbury uses gouache but you could use acrylic or acrylic gouache if that's handy.
Still Life Drawing is another book for the novice. Alice Oehr is a illustrator and designer. She admits that she isn't a master drawer and to embrace when things don't go to plan. The projects she lays out can be done in the book (unless it's a library book like mine) or in your own sketchbook. She starts with the basics of art with line to shape to colour to texture and pattern, light and shade etc.
I need to get Screenprints: A History back out of the library or just own this book. It is a very interesting book on the relatively short history of the screen print or serigraph or silkscreen - all the names that have been used to describe this printing technique. I particularly liked the up-to-date look at contemporary artists working in this form.
101 Watercolor Secrets is another of those books that I got out of the library that I now want for my book collection. I need to develop a sticker for those books... It really goes into a lot of depth about the colours out there and for someone who makes her own watercolour, this is very interesting. But it covers every aspect of watercolour from the paints to the technique to subjects and composition. It is brilliant. And what a pleasure to find out that the author, Anna Bucciarelli, is Canadian!
Creative Sketching Workshop draws together a number of sketchers from around the world. They present really prompts rather than step-by-step instruction in their "workshops". These are well illustrated with their examples on things like drawing people in motion, deserted places, very tall structures, being a passenger in a car along with basic like streets and architecture and portraits. So many great examples by the likes of Liz Steel, Paul Wang, Rita Sabler, James Hobbs and the book's editor Pete Scully. At the back of the book there are handy guides to perspective, drawing figures and sketching and shading marks.
I believe I saw this, Legendary Artists and the Clothes They Wore, reviewed in an art magazine and then ordered it from the library thinking it would be an interesting read and it is. My only beef is that they talk about the clothes but they seldom illustrate it instead often settling for images of contemporary takes on the artist's work in modern fashion.
If you've made it this far you know I am fascinated with colour (not many artists aren't) and especially more so since creating my own watercolours (available for purchase!). So when I saw this book, Chromatopia, I knew I had to get it. It covers around 50 of the world's most vivid colours and their history from being squeezed from beetles to burned for colour - all of the heavy hitters are covered in this book.
I keep promising myself that I will devote more time to understanding oil painting and that means actually doing it. I've only been really dabbling in it. I think it's because I don't totally understand it. The one thing that always put me off oil painting was the use of solvents. I really finally turned to oil when watermixable oils came on to the market. Kimberly Brooks learned the hard way to avoid solvents and so her book, The New Oil Painting, really sets off with this main aim as well as detailing everything else you will need along with a bit of history. Brooks didn't adapt to the use of watermixable oils so has other ways of avoiding solvents. This book is great for artists already using oils to newbies.
If you ever have issues with picking colours or being overwhelmed by colours as well as having trouble mixing the colours you want this little book The Colour Mixing Companion will be helpful. It can be applied to watercolours, oils or acrylics. Now every brand has their own versions of, say, burnt sienna, so there are some slight variations but the theory of mixing is there.
Are you feeling creatively stumped or maybe even feeling a bit down and maybe something creative will help. Draw and Be Happy has prompts to get you started. The author is the cofounder of Hospital Rooms bringing artwork to mental-health facilities across the UK. The illustrations alone will lift your spirit.
I've done demos and mini-workshops but I would like to do more indepth teaching so I tripped across this book, Teaching Creative Workshops, and had to order it from library. This book applies to online and in-person teaching. It goes through all of the questions you may have starting with Why do you want to Teach? It also covers the nitty gritty like pricing, how to get paid, and marketing.
Sketch Your World by James Hobbs is very much along the lines of other urban sketching books listed here. Hobbs has gathered together the advice from over 20 other artists to share their work and wisdom as well as his own input. There's even a small section on how to make your own sketchbook (particularly of interest to me and you can see my instruction here). There are chapters on such things as large subjects such as Architecture and People to more niche subjects like Night-time scenes and Digital Tools.
This is a slim little volume. The Colour Mixing Guide Watercolour Seashore is part of a series on different subjects including one on Woodlands. The book starts with tools and techniques and general information about the colour wheel. The majority of the book focuses on projects with the colours listed to use such as painting feathers, stones, mussel shells etc.
This book has come at just the right time as I am questioning what I do. Who am I kidding? I've always questioned why I bother creating. We Need Your Art gives you a two-week reset programme to dispel those negative thoughts. It addresses some of the misconceptions about being a creative and what we can do to keep going and why we should.
The Bedside Book of Watercolor Wisdom: 500 Practical Hints, Tips, and Solutions for All Artists is another slim volume but boy does it pack a punch. There are SO many great tips and tricks. But to call them that lessens the practical quality of the several techniques to convey things like fur on animals (even specifically wooly textures). There are basics for trees and then more focus on distant trees or bark or masses of foliage.