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This new series from Black’s has every appearance of being aimed at the competent amateur rather than the fashion design student and the production slots it in perfectly. The projects are sufficiently detailed that these are much more than just look-at books but sufficiently well and attractively illustrated that they capture the imagination and maintain the interest. If there’s a quibble, it’s that the stockists listed are all in London, but they all appear to have websites and a little time spent with Google or the Yellow Pages should throw up something in your area if you don’t want to go the mail order route.

Author: Christina Brodie, Medium: Craft, Publisher: A&C Black, Series: Methods & Techniques, Subject: Fashion Design

After a bit of a wobble over Venice, Wendy is back to form and well within what I think we all regard as her comfort zone.

The book follows the by now well-established Ready to Paint format, with a series of six pre-drawn tracings that combine with detailed demonstrations of how to paint them. As with previous volumes, however, the result is very much more than a beginner’s painting-by-numbers exercise and turns itself into one of the best introductions there is to painting flowers in the increasingly popular medium of acrylics.

Author: Wendy Jelbert, Medium: Acrylic, Publisher: Search Press, Series: Ready To Paint, Subject: Flowers

This is a modestly priced book that falls somewhere between the pretty, project-based picture book for the amateur and the expert’s detailed manual.

Well and attractively illustrated, it includes a good variety of designs with enough details of how to make them to ensure that you should be able to achieve the desired results without including so much technical information that you lose the will to continue.

Fashion students will probably find the book annoyingly trivial, but the competent amateur needlecrafter should be well satisfied.

Author: Karen Henriksen, Medium: Craft, Publisher: A&C Black, Series: Methods & Techniques, Subject: Fashion Design

This new series from Black’s has every appearance of being aimed at the competent amateur rather than the fashion design student and the production slots it in perfectly. The projects are sufficiently detailed that these are much more than just look-at books but sufficiently well and attractively illustrated that they capture the imagination and maintain the interest. If there’s a quibble, it’s that the stockists listed are all in London, but they all appear to have websites and a little time spent with Google or the Yellow Pages should throw up something in your area if you don’t want to go the mail order route.



Author: Christina Brodie, Medium: Craft, Publisher: A&C Black, Series: Methods & Techniques, Subject: Fashion Design

Any title like this is a bold claim and something of a hostage to fortune, but a quick flick through the pages reveals a pretty thorough cornucopia of subjects and techniques and a well-designed layout based on a series of 2-page spreads that allow you to see everything at a glance. Trudy Friend is an experienced author and this is an approach she has used to good effect in previous books, so you can fairly say that it’s tried and tested.

As a manual covering all media, subjects and techniques, it’s necessarily relatively superficial and there are inevitable gaps so, if you’re looking for something specific, you might find that it falls through one of them or that the coverage isn’t quite as detailed as you’d like.

The progression of the book is in four stages. After a brief introduction to the various media, what they do and how they’re used, you have basic mark-making, developing your skills, problems and solutions and composition. To an extent, these are devices rather than obvious divisions and this is a book that’s best used by simply opening it more or less at random and seeing whether what you’ve found takes your fancy. There’s a good variety of subjects covered, including landscapes and figures and some very sound advice on all of them. It’s fair to say that, even if you don’t connect with everything in the book, you’ll find more than enough to justify the purchase price and that the browsing approach will yield gems that will stand you in good stead at all times.

David & Charles

Author: Trudy Friend, Medium: Various, Publisher: David & Charles, Subject: Techniques

Black’s Printmaking Handbook series has already established itself as adventurous and unafraid to take on the big subject and here it does that quite literally: some of these projects occupy a whole room! Certainly, this is a long way from just engraved plates and a single sheet of paper.

As ever, a great deal is crammed into a short length, but there’s no sense of overcrowding and the book only ever attempts to be a general survey. However, as well as some basic technical chapters, there is also a look at a good number of pieces by contemporary workers in the field and the quality of the illustrations is exemplary.

Author: Alexia Tala, Medium: Installation, Medium: Printmaking, Publisher: A&C Black, Series: Printmaking Handbook, Subject: Techniques

This is the sister volume to the previous one on watercolour and, if it follows the success of that, it’s a fair bet we’ll be raising quite a family.

Most of what I said previously applies here. It’s a gimmick, but sometimes gimmicks make you sit up and suddenly understand what has previously been a problem subject. I still think that the illustrations are a bit flat, even though the trick paper has gone. Nevertheless, there’s a good variety of subject matter and the medium is used in both impasto and as a wash, so you get to see most of the techniques you’ll want.

I don’t think this is a book you’d buy at any price, but equally, it’s certainly not a tenner wasted.

Author: John Barber, Medium: Acrylic, Publisher: Search Press, Series: Colour Wheel Book, Subject: Colour Mixing, Subject: Techniques

My first thought on seeing the title of this really rather beautiful volume was, “aha!” in anticipation of a eureka moment. Clearly, this was what the editor expected, because the front flap blurb is devoted to an explanation of “the book’s apparently rather whimsical title”. And suddenly, my hackles are up; if you have to explain a title, isn’t it the wrong title?

In spite of what you might be expecting, this is not a detailed manual of clever or arcane techniques that you normally only get told about if you know the correct handshake. Rather, it’s a look at the work of 67 contemporary printmakers with a short essay by each about how they work. A more accurately descriptive title would have been “Contemporary Printmakers at Work”, though that, somehow, just sounds dull. But you get the idea.

As what it is, it’s a fascinating and beautiful book and one that any printmaker or buyer of prints is going to want to have on their shelves. It’s not cheap, but Black’s are not afraid to ask the going price for quality and every illustration is perfect.

And the title? Well apparently, “it was chosen because it can hardly be the case that any two artists making prints, even if working in the same technical specialism, will achieve their ends in precisely the same way”. You don’t say. Better ignore Chris Orr’s advice then, “I often startle students by telling them my golden rule: you should never remember anything you learn in a print workshop”. (To be fair, his point is that you should be constantly learning and reinventing).

Anyway, now that we know what the book is, we can say that it’s really very good, but aren’t you glad you’ve got me to decode the runes for you?

Author: Anthony Dyson, Medium: Printmaking, Publisher: A&C Black

This is one of the most basic painting books I have ever come across and I mean that as the highest praise I can give it. Very few beginners’ guides start as far back in the learning process as this does, nor do they hold your hand quite as firmly and lead you so confidently through the fundamental processes and techniques. There has always been a debate about whether it’s really possible to learn painting from books and I’m not about to come down on either side, but I really do think that this book weighs the scales pretty heavily in favour of the printed word.

Mark (Mary is the writer and they make a good team) covers a lot of ground and gets most things out of the way in only two or three pages, keeping the explanations simple and including plenty of step-by-step and example illustrations. He never loses sight of the fact that he’s showing you not how to paint, but how to start to paint and resists all temptations to over-elaborate.

The included DVD is an extract (about a third) of its commercial cousin, but still manages to cover colour mixing, basic washes and negative shapes.

North Light

Author: Mark Willenbrink, Medium: Watercolour, Publisher: North Light, Subject: Techniques

There’s an old adage that every small boy wants to grow up to be an engine driver. Actually, I suspect that applies more to the age of steam when locomotives were complex, fire-breathing beasts that needed a huge mix of skills to handle and which were almost like living creatures - one false move and they’d have your hand off, no messing. Bit like swans, really. Or was that your leg?

Well, anyway, that little bit of slapstick is a way of letting you know that I’m a sucker for a bit of steam and that this book pushes so many buttons I’m finding it very difficult to be objective. In fact, hang on a minute, I’ve never claimed to be objective, so let’s not even bother. Where I’m trying to get to is to say that the thing about this book is that it’s not one for the rivet counters, but that it captures to absolute perfection the emotional state of just watching a steam engine, whether going full chat up an incline, sitting quietly in a siding, or just rotting in a scrapyard, tears of rust staining its noble flanks.

Look, if you don’t know what I’m taking about, please move away now, because this isn’t a book for you. I don’t mean that unkindly, but the simple fact is that you’ll be wasting your twenty quid and, while we’re on the subject, ONLY TWENTY QUID?, they’re practically giving this away.

I’ve reviewed David Weston’s books before and I’ve liked his ability to create the atmosphere of a landscape, often as you’d like it to be rather than faithfully as it is and now that he’s turned to a subject he clearly understands and loves deeply, I can see what he’s doing. What you get here is the romance of steam without it being romanticised. These locos don’t always shine, sometimes they’re grimy and not in a pretty way, either. They’re, well, they’re . . . steamy.

It’s quite possible that the purists will hate this. There’s a lot of detail not there, sometimes it’s more about the location and the light and shade than it is about the configuration of the wheels, but it’s a wonderful thing to handle and the reproduction is superb.

Author: David Weston, Medium: Oil, Medium: Watercolour, Publisher: Halsgrove, Publisher: Halstar, Subject: Railways