Ready-To-Paint is a series of unique books designed for beginning artists who want to paint, but whose lack of drawing ability is holding them back. Each book concentrates on a different popular subject for paintings, and contains six reusable tracings plus full instructions on how to paint the pictures. This title looks at hills and mountains, impressive and appealing subjects for some attractive landscape paintings.

You might have heard me cheering from miles away when I read that this author recommends that beginning painters purchase student quality paints—at last, somebody who agrees with me!  After all, these books are designed for the novice who might not take to the subject and regret wasting all that money. This is a particularly good entry in this series for a number of reasons, not least the author’s sensible and beginner-friendly advice such as clipping a sheet of paper to a board and not stretching it.  In short, this book really is aimed at somebody who wants to discover how much they like painting before going the whole nine yards. The projects themselves have some of the most detailed instructions I have seen and are literally foolproof, while allowing space for the painter to "sing with their own voice" as the author puts it. Even if you don’t want to concentrate on painting this type of landscape this is a good book to buy—I’m impressed.

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