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There’s a slightly saccharine quality to the results produced here, but it’s not something you couldn’t tone down in your own work. Books on portraiture are thin on the ground and on painting children even more so, so this is a particularly welcome gap-filler. There’s a good variety of hair, skin and facial types, as well as sound but simple notes on how to deal with the main facial features and step by step demonstrations that are thorough without being over-worked.

All in all, this is an excellent place to start and would probably also carry some welcome hints for the more practised artist.

North Light

Author: Victoria Lisi, Medium: Oil, Publisher: North Light, Subject: Children, Subject: Portraiture

The bulk of this book is devoted to that peculiarly American phenomenon, the floral. This is a formalised still life of flowers, almost always with a cut-glass vase and often also a lace table cloth. It’s a style of painting I suspect you either love or loathe, although I also suspect that, in the right market, they’d be highly saleable. As a bit of variety, this also includes some fruit, which does tend to push it into the category of still life, rather than the purely floral.

It’s not really possible to recommend this as a flower painting book because it’s so specialised, but the demonstrations are well done and contain much useful and practical advice, particularly on glazing. If this is a style you think you might like to explore, then it’s a must. Otherwise, there is useful information to be gleaned, but you might find the pickings rather lean for the price.

North Light

Author: Arleta Peach, Medium: Oil, Publisher: North Light, Subject: Flowers, Subject: Fruit & Vegetables

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 by no means a book for the beginner, but rather a comprehensive review of landscape painting, for the most part in oils, for the serious student and, as such, it’s to be welcomed.

Most of the book is taken up with a discussion of the process of landscape painting and methods of interpreting different subjects, elements, colours, shapes and lighting patterns. There’s a great deal to read, but it’s punctuated with plenty of illustrations that illuminate the text and never leave you struggling for comprehension. The final section of the book is devoted to a series of demonstration paintings of a good variety of subjects and these are discussed in detail rather than being in the form that could almost be described as painting by numbers.

If you’re a landscape painter and you want a book that takes you as seriously as you take your subject, look no further.

Author: Mitchell Albala, Medium: Oil, Publisher: Watson Guptill, Subject: Landscape

Good portrait painting books come along all too infrequently and something which takes the subject seriously and looks at it in such depth as this is to be welcomed. Suzanne Brooker examines every aspect of portrait painting, from style to facial features and expressions to composition and painting methods. There’s a great deal to read here, but there are also plenty of illustrations to leaven and punctuate it so that you’re never left struggling for comprehension. There is a also a generous series of demonstration paintings which are described in some detail. Although, as a result, they have fewer stage illustrations than has perhaps become the norm, they are, I think, more suited to the more technically advanced artist, the sort of person who is likely to be going into portraiture seriously. In any case, the whole book is anything but an introduction for the beginner and will appeal to (and should satisfy) the more demanding reader. It is a large and quite heavy tome that rewards extended study and is admirably comprehensive both in its coverage and its execution of that coverage.

If I have a reservation, it’s perhaps that the style of painting tends rather heavily towards the old-master that’s (admittedly) implied in the subtitle, but it is an American book and American portraiture can be rather like that. I still think you can learn a lot from it, though and I don’t think you’d feel your money was wasted. If that sounds like faint praise, it’s not meant to be.

Author: Suzanne Brooker, Medium: Oil, Publisher: Watson Guptill, Subject: Portraiture

For what’s intended to be a basic introduction, this features some quite complex subjects with a lot of elements, colours and brushwork. The extensive step-by-step photographs that are a feature of this series do a good job of working through the many stages of building up such images, but beginners might find themselves put off by the amount of work involved and the number of things you have to do to achieve the finished result. I can’t help thinking that Search Press have other series where this author might have been put to better use.

However, if you’re already reasonably proficient with oil paints, then you might find that this offers something in that no man’s land between the introduction and the masterclass. It’s not that there isn’t some good stuff here, I’m just not sure who it’s aimed at.

Author: David Crane, Medium: Oil, Publisher: Search Press, Series: How to Paint, Subject: Landscape

It’s good to see Noel Gregory, one of Search Press’s best oil painters, back in their lists. His brush-applied impasto style and use of bright colours produces attractive and not over-worked results that have an instant appeal. This is, as far as I know, the first time the Ready to Paint series, with its pre-printed tracings, has ventured into oils and you might think that it’ll struggle with what’s sometimes seen as the expert’s medium. However, that’s a myth Noel easily dispels and, by allowing you to concentrate on the painting without worrying about the draughtsmanship, he’ll show that results can come quickly and with relative ease.

Author: Noel Gregory, Medium: Oil, Series: Ready To Paint, Subject: Landscape

The basic principle of this ingenious series is by now established. The cover includes a simple colour wheel and then the body of the text provides a series of eight demonstrations based around specific colour combinations. Neither of these things is original on its own, but the idea of putting them together is really quite inspired and provides a way in to what is for many a tricky subject.

The original watercolour volume used a trick paper that was supposed to mimic watercolour paper, not altogether successfully, but neither of its successors has gone down that path. However, the illustrations in both do seem rather dark, here to the point almost of murkiness and I do wonder whether there is a reproduction issue.

That aside, the series is a bold and largely successful attempt to provide a way through the maze that is colour mixing and is to be welcomed for that.

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

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

It’s good that a serious monograph has been devoted to Crawshaw, and not just to Alwyn but to June as well. Alwyn is, of course, well-known and has been part of the practical art scene for many years having written many books. June, however, has only emerged as an artist in her own right relatively recently and she has matured into a painter who has mastered small, intimate scenes, the details that are often overlooked. Although you can see Alwyn’s influence in her work, she has her own recognisable style and the two of them complement each other nicely.

As ever with Halsgrove books, this is mainly about the paintings – over 100 of them and pretty much equally divided between the two artists. There is, of course, no shortage of Alwyn’s work in print because of the number of books he has written, but not many of them are as generously sized as these are, or they are part of a step by step demonstration. Steve Hall’s approach is to categorise by artist and subject – Alwyn paints landscapes, June paints flowers, gardens and beaches, etc and, although it inevitably pigeonholes things a bit, this does bring some order to what could otherwise have become a bit of a ragbag and have done its subjects no justice at all.

There is also a short biographical introduction that contains most of the factual information you could want, especially if you haven’t managed to get hold of a copy of Alwyn’s painting autobiography, The Artist at Work. A pleasant surprise is the foreword by the editor of most of Alwyn’s art instruction books, which gives a very real sense of the warmth of both Alwyn and June and a clue to why it is they have been so enduringly popular in print, as demonstrators and on television.

Popularity often has the effect of trivialising – someone that ubiquitous somehow can’t really be a serious artist, can they? Look at this collection, however, and you’ll realise that the Crawshaws deserve another look.

Author: Alwyn Crawshaw, Author: June Crawshaw, Author: Steve Hall, Medium: Acrylic, Medium: Oil, Medium: Watercolour, Publisher: Halsgrove, Publisher: Halstar