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My goodness, this is a bit specialised, isn’t it? I think I can honestly say this is the first book I’ve seen on painting butterflies, so in this respect, it is at least unique. A word of caution though: this is an American book and these are American butterflies, so don’t be looking for a Purple Emperor or a Camberwell Beauty (though there is a token European Peacock).

The truth is that this isn’t a book aimed in any way at the general painter but is rather a specific style. If you like the idea, it’s well done and the results are attractive so it’s at least worth a look. The surprising thing is that, although they look like watercolours, the paintings are in fact oils.

North Light

Author: Sherry C Nelson, Medium: Oil, Publisher: David & Charles, Publisher: North Light, Subject: Butterflies, Subject: Flowers

This is clearly a book the publisher expects you to keep by your side and probably get dirty in use. How do I know this? Well, they give you a plastic sleeve for the paperback cover and that’s an additional production expense and publishers HATE those.

OK, so we’ve deduced that it’s something you’ll be referring to as you paint, but does it live up to the implied claim of its title? Well, the subtitle limits its coverage to Landscapes, Flowers and Animals, but that’s still a wide scope. The basic layout is: problem on the left-hand page, solution on the right, so it does follow the by now conventional pattern of the made-up problem, a painting done deliberately badly to illustrate a particular point. I’ve always had reservations about those because I can’t help wondering whether anyone finds them recognisable. That said, if you’re going to say, “most beginners do it like this”, there’s no other way round it really. A score draw on that one, I think.

In terms of coverage, there’s a good balance of both detail and more general work, especially in the landscape section. When we get to flowers and animals, things are a bit more specific and get down to species quite quickly so that you might find your particular bugbear [not a species, ed] doesn’t get covered. If the book has a weakness, this is it. Nevertheless, Trudy is an old hand at the problem/solution approach and she does it well. On balance, I’d say you’ll get much more from this than you’ll miss, which is perhaps faint praise, but it’s very much one you’ll need to make up your own mind about.

David & Charles

Author: Trudy Friend, Publisher: David & Charles, Subject: Animals, Subject: Flowers, Subject: Landscape

The medium of acrylics is increasing in popularity and there is a growing number of books describing techniques both in general and for a variety of subjects. What this one offers is something really rather comprehensive.

It starts with the usual basic introduction to materials and colours, moving on to techniques with some rather useful notes on brushwork before the more familiar bits about shapes, composition and so on. Every book ever written seems to assume that it’s the only book ever written, so this stuff is pretty much inevitable and you just have to pick out anything that’s better than the usual run of the mill or which seems relevant to any specific need that you may have. There’s actually some quite good stuff here, so I’m going to give it 7/10 but with a gold star for being specifically relevant to landscape painting which is, after all the subject of the book.

From this point, after some perhaps carping criticism (but I do see an awful lot of books!), it all gets a whole lot better with sections and exercises on specific landscape elements including clouds, trees, mountains and water. The final section of the book, Putting It All Together, comprises a generous selection of demonstrations which cover just about any type of landscape you’re likely to want to tackle. Although this is an American book, the style won’t be at all alien to a British audience and no translation should be necessary on that score.

As a complete introduction to painting landscapes in acrylics, this is hard to beat.

North Light

Author: Lee Hammond, Medium: Acrylic, Publisher: David & Charles, Publisher: North Light, Subject: Landscape

This isn’t the sort of book I’d normally review and, no, I haven’t started an equestrian spin-off. Dangerous things, horses, have a mind of their own!

In point of fact, the book was sent to me in error, but it’s worth drawing to the attention of anyone who wants to paint horses because of the excellent illustrations of equine anatomy, many of them rather neatly overlaid with the skeletal structure. If you’re wanting to paint horses and you want them to have that natural sense of movement that even a standing horse has, it’s well worth having this by your side.

Author: Gillian Higgins, Publisher: David & Charles, Subject: Horses

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

I think you have to admit that the Quick & Clever series title is a bit of a hostage to fortune – I mean, sooner or later surely they’re going to come up with something that’s neither, and then what’ll we do for eggs, hmm?

I also think we have to admit that some of the results here are sometimes a little bit flat, a little bit two-dimensional. However, that’s more than made up for by the fact that Michael offers not only a rather good grounding in basic techniques (and other books wholly devoted to that subject have frequently missed the point entirely), but also some, well, it has to be said, clever ideas for working quickly, most of which work very well. You’d have to be pretty picky to cavil, but then that’s my job: I do it so you don’t have to. Poor me.

The thing about drawing is that it’s a very basic skill and one which it’s very hard to learn from scratch. Sure, if you have a modicum of ability you can practice and you can also learn a huge variety of techniques, but if you haven’t got the sort of eye that can translate a three dimensional subject into just height and width and only use tone and shading to suggest depth, you’re in trouble. What you get here are some neat, well-executed and well-presented ideas that will give you quite reasonable results very quickly, boosting your confidence and persuading you that maybe you can do it. After all, there’s nothing more calculated to discourage the beginner that to spend hours fiddling about with a drawing, watching it get away from them before their very eyes and then finishing up like, well, like something even the dog wouldn’t recognise as dinner.

This is one of those books where you can feel that author, editor and designer have worked together as a team, so congratulations to all of them on a job well done.




Publisher link

Author: Michael Sanders, Medium: Drawing, Publisher: David & Charles, Series: Quick & Clever, Subject: Techniques

This is Lian Zhen’s third book on Chinese painting and follows his excellent and successful introductory guide and a volume on animals. In both of these, he demonstrated a fluid style that combines Oriental painting techniques with more Western ideas of composition that gives his work an instant appeal and combines a simplicity of approach with more extensive use of colour and the inclusion of more detail than you would get in traditional Chinese painting.

Having told you what went before, it probably won’t come as a surprise that this latest title provides more of the same. However it is, if anything, even better than its predecessors. Flower painting lends itself to a simplified approach and the use of colour, rather than line, to produce the finished result. The flowers throughout are things you’re likely to recognise and there are some very full step by step demonstrations that explain clearly the methods used. This isn’t botanical illustration by any means and the first impression in almost all cases is of a riot of colour. However, this impressionism isn’t extreme and the book stands well as a general guide to flower painting and not just a specialised Oriental one. It’s a visual feast that follows up with some excellent instruction and one which won’t, I think, disappoint anyone.

Publisher link

Author: Lian Quan Zhen, Medium: Chinese Painting, Medium: Watercolour, Publisher: David & Charles, Subject: Flowers

This is a rare treat, because it’s not often you get a book on drawing by someone who is themselves a successful published illustrator.

Cliff Wright’s biggest claim to fame is a couple of Harry Potter covers (and you can bet the competition for those is pretty stiff), but he has also written some delightful children’s books himself such as Bear and Kite and The Star That Fell that are characterised by beautiful and sensitive watercolours that stop well short of being cutesy.

What this almost modest-looking paperback offers is a positive masterclass in drawing animals, people and natural history subjects, albeit slightly dressed-up as fantasy art. Cliff conveys more in a few words and drawings than many books don’t even manage in a whole chapter and this is a thoroughly practical guide as well as an absolute eye-opener to the many possibilities available to you. There’s also a good degree of humour – I just love the drawing of a Hippogriff wrapped in a blanket against the snow – and the spread where a self portrait turns into a horse eating a cake (yes, really) is in fact a masterpiece of character development and the use of line.

If you’re an aspiring illustrator, this has to be compulsory reading, but there’s so much more to it as well. It’ll show you how to develop characters, how to draw with absolute economy and how to work from life to art.

David & Charles

Author: Cliff Wright, Medium: Drawing, Medium: Watercolour, Publisher: David & Charles, Publisher: Impact, Subject: Animals, Subject: Fantasy art, Subject: Figure, Subject: Nature

In the past, I’ve been fairly (well, OK, extremely) dismissive of books which are made small to fit a perceived pocket-book market and which would really be so much better if someone would just give them space to breathe and the page size to allow you to see what’s going on. Not to put too fine a point on it, I’ve had quite a go at them. I probably need The Little Book of Calm.

And that’s the point; they sell very well, there’s a demand for them, they meet a need. So I’m not going to tell you that I can’t quite see the point of a book of drawing techniques that’s 6 inches by 4 inches and would sit nicely in the pocket of a reasonably substantial jacket. And which has a flexible cover that won’t crease or dog-ear as you carry it about. This format worked very well in the same publisher’s Colour Mixing Index, but I have to admit that, while you might well want to have a guide to colour mixing about your person, I’m not sure that you’re going to sit down in the middle of a field and start consulting a textbook in order to decide which drawing technique to use.

But, like I said, I’m not going to say all that because you’ll love it and it’ll sell by the truckload and then I’ll be wrong and I am Never Wrong. What the limited page size does do is make sure the author keeps things simple and it does have to be said that the writer, editors and designers involved with this book have understood the concept perfectly and work well within the format they’ve given themselves. Each technique gets a single two-page spread and no more, with example illustrations and a minimum of text (so you won’t have to strain your eyes to read it) and it doesn’t mess about. OK, maybe it’s not a book to carry about, but neither is it one you have to keep putting back on the shelf. Keep it beside you and it won’t get in the way and you can pick it up and dip into it at any time, which is probably the best way of using it. It won’t tell you something you don’t know all the time, but it will do that often enough to justify the purchase price.

David & Charles

Author: David Webb, Medium: Drawing, Publisher: David & Charles, Series: Index

There’s a lot to recommend this new book from a seasoned North Light author, but also one or two reservations you should be aware of.

The first thing you’ll notice is the breadth of its coverage: people, animals, buildings, plants, still lifes as well as techniques including shapes, colours and textures. It’s comprehensive and, in fact, you could easily use it as a very thorough introduction to drawing before you even start to think about working with colour.

The layout of the book reveals an author who is confident with their medium and material. Rather than divide the progression into sections, Lee intersperses the technical lessons – shapes, perspective. textures, that sort of thing, with the demonstrations, each of which deals with one particular subject falling into the general category list above. The result is something that’s easy to follow, doesn’t bog you down with an endless list of things to learn and varies the pace as you pick up a bit of information and then put it into practice in an actual drawing. Other art instruction books please note this!

Although this is a relatively slim volume, you in fact get 144 pages and a real wealth of valuable instruction. In terms of bangs per buck, I’ve rarely seen a book that betters this, and it does it both in terms of quantity and quality. At under £15, it’s an absolute steal.

I said there was a reservation. Well, the colours are, frankly, a bit garish and some of the drawing style is perhaps a little bit coarse. I’m not sure if this is a consequence of the reproduction or whether it’s Lee’s style, though I suspect the latter. Does this outweigh all the positive things I’ve said before, though? Well, no, I don’t think it does and there is a small advantage in that the illustrations aren’t wishy-washy, as coloured pencil books can so easily be. When it comes to seeing what’s going on, you’re never in any doubt.

On balance, I think the verdict has to be: buy this book if you’re at all interested in drawing and, if you’re a beginner who’s got beyond the basic mark-making stage, consider it as a very well structured course that could help you progress a long way.

North Light 2008
£14.99

Author: Lee Hammond, Medium: Coloured Pencil, Medium: Drawing, Publisher: David & Charles, Subject: Techniques