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Anna Mason’s Watercolour World
BY Anna Mason

Search Press
27 March 2018/ ISBN 9781782213475
How-To Books/Art

Reviewed by Rachel Hyde

 

Bring the outdoors indoors and brighten up even the grayest day by painting the natural world. Ms. Mason’s style is almost photographic in its detail, capturing the beauty and color of flora and fauna through the medium of watercolor. This lushly illustrated hardcover book gives in insight into how she works, and how to use her expertise to capture nature for yourself.

Ms. Mason runs an online painting school, and reading this book is a bit like attending a class. This is due to her way of talking to the reader, describing how she goes about her work and imparting all kinds of useful tips. She starts by talking about her love of gardening and nature, and how soul refreshing it is. There are tips for using a camera, working from photographs and composing a good picture. All her lessons are accompanied by many examples so it is easy to understand what is being discussed. Discover this artist’s own take on choosing materials, achieving realism, drawing and painting techniques and more. It is very much a personal look at her methods in one way, but they are methods that would work well for anybody trying to achieve a similar realistic look to their art. Half the book is given to learning the basics of this style of painting and the other to the projects. There are only four of these but each one really goes into everything you need to know to produce the picture. You can work through all the stages, each of which has a photograph of the picture at that stage plus a description of what to do. Paint a blackberry, autumn leaf, sunflower head and a blue tit; the realistic style not only brings them to vibrant life but enables the painter to see their detail and beauty. At the back are traceable outlines which help those whose drawing skills are not of the best, but I would mostly recommend this book to somebody with a good working knowledge of painting. This is a gorgeously illustrated book with plenty of coffee table appeal while being a user friendly primer at the same time. Highly recommended.

If you cannot find a good range of watercolor materials locally try www.searchpress.com for a list of suppliers.

Reviews of other titles by this author

The Modern Flower Painter
Anna Mason’s Watercolour World

  


UK Reviewer: Rachel Hyde's work can be found in The Bead Magazine, Making Jewellery and www.craftsuprint.com/rachel-a-hyde/
Reviewed 2017
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