Drawing and Painting Mermaids
Elaine Hamer

Search Press
25 October 2011 /ISBN: 9781844483761
How-To Books/Painting
Amazon  /  Amazon UK

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde

This is a book about painting in watercolors and gouache, and all the paintings shown have a dreamy, translucent quality about them. They are also all in the art nouveau style, so if you want a more naturalistic look or prefer another school of art then you had better look elsewhere. This style suits the subject matter well enough however and the end result reminds me of color plates in old children’s books. There are lessons in here about perspective, adding tails to human figures, picking out elements in a story in order to plan a painting and many other useful things. All these tips are handsomely illustrated and you can also learn about different kinds of mermaids, their history and more. I particularly like the page that shows a close-up of a mermaid, complete with scaly tail; the scales are all samples of the color paints you need to buy. There are two projects in here complete with what you need to buy and lots of illustrated stages, as well as plenty of drawings of the elements needed to fill a picture containing mermaids. If you cannot draw competently that need not deter you either, for although there are no pullout tracings in here there are two traceable drawings at the back. These are the drawings for the two staged projects and need enlarging before use. If you like the art nouveau style and want to paint mermaids this large format hardcover book is just the job.