David Bellamy
Search Press
October 2010 / ISBN 1844485838
How-To Books/Painting
Amazon US
|| UK
Reviewed
by Rachel A Hyde
If you want
your landscape paintings to pack a punch, tackling impressive views
of towering mountains and bleak, windswept moors is a good choice
of subject. In this book you can learn how to capture these inspiring
images in watercolors.
Firstly, you can hear me cheering when I read that Mr Bellamy suggests
buying student quality paints is a good plan for anybody starting
out or practising. That is, after all, what they are for (there
is a big clue in the name) and here is one of the very few art instruction
primer writers to agree with me. This sets the tone for a sensible,
realistic book that does not advocate buying everything in the store
and which has good advice for outdoor sketching as well as working
from photographs. I particularly like the two paintings showing
how not to lay out a landscape, and what constitutes a well constructed
picture. There are sections on how to draw the elements that make
up this type of painting, from rocky textures to animals and human
figures, trees, water and skies. As actually having a go is the
best way to learn there are also several projects to work through,
with step-by-step pictures with captions showing how the painting
is built up and how to do the various effects. I enjoyed the way
that such a daunting subject was broken up into manageable elements,
with plenty of instruction on how to achieve them along the way.
A useful addition to your bookshelf, which for once does not advocate
breaking the bank!
Reviews
of other titles by this author
Complete
Guide To Watercolour Painting
Mountains
and Moorlands in Watercolour
Skies,
Light and Atmosphere in Watercolor
Winter
Landscapes In Watercolour
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