August 06
If you are a watercolor landscape artist you will almost certainly want to incorporate studies of trees and foliage into your paintings. Getting the effect of all those millions of leaves is tricky, not to mention flowers, branches and berries. Here is a book that shows you how to do it for twenty-four different trees.
This is not a book on the art of watercolor painting for beginners, but a dedicated primer that just deals with the subject matter in the title. It assumes that you are already a painter (although not an advanced one necessarily) and goes on from there. However, a brief mention is made about what materials are used, in particular a useful palette of colors that have been used to paint the trees. This means all of them, so it is best (as with all how-to books) to read the book carefully first and choose your trees. Simiilarly, a brief mention (with helpful illustrations) follows dealing with techniques used such as wet-in-wet, laying washes, texturing etc. This serves to limber the reader up for the meat of the book rather in the manner of a hors d'oeuvre and make sure that you have the right tools.
The trees themselves are an interesting selection. Good of English oak is there of course, along with chestnut, birch and maple, three palms, garden favourites like bottlebrush and holly plus more exotic inclusions such as Caucasian Zelkova and oleander. The trees seem to have been chosen for their wide variety in shapes, differing foliage and coloring rather than for their likelihood in being encountered. Thus the description on the back of the book that this book shows you how to paint 24 of the most popular species of tree is not perhaps quite correct; but this is a book for painting the world's trees so I guess it depends where you are painting. I liked the way in which the trees were briefly described and then there followed a lesson on how to paint a picture like the one shown from start to finish. Listing the paints needed was very helpful, as were the staged close-ups of the work and the final two page spreads of the finished work. Having such large pictures makes it easier to scrutinize them for technique - rather like being in an artist's studio. This is a useful book with something to teach most intermediate watercolor artists.
* Myshelf.com *
July 06
This is my favourite book of all time and I am not exaggerating. It's so wonderful to be able to have expertise on how to paint such a wide range of trees at my fingertips. My other love besides art is making altered books. And so recently my son and I covered a board book with some lovely countryside paper and then he helped me produce a lovely A-Z of trees. My four year old son sticking in leaves he had collected and me painting many of the trees featured in this book to go in our completed project. My son and I were delighted with the end result and of course this was a perfect excuse for practising my painting of trees. I can honestly say I was 100% happy with each of my paintings because I followed the step-by-step guide for each tree and the end results were simply stunning. The instructions in this book couldn't have been more simple and detailed at the same time. This book will remain a firm treasure of mine!
* minigallery.co.uk *
August 2006
A renowned and popular teacher in the Surrey and Hampshire areas, Adelene Fletcher's acclaim spread wider when she stared to appear in print.
This, her fourth book, is now available in paperback and was the successor to her excellent Watercolour Flower Painter's A-Z. Not that many books appear on painting trees and one of the best was Adrian Hill's little drawing guide published by Blandford Press many years ago. The volume in question, although larger and more ambitious, is a worthy successor to that little gem.
One of the problems facing anyone planning a book of this type is that most artists don't want to paint specific trees in the way that they might a flower. What they really want is to incorporate trees in the population of a landscape and have them look realistic and at the same time not to be too fussy and overworked. The trouble is that, although this is an art in itself, there isn't really a book in it. Most books on landscape will have a go at trees, but the authors usually confines themselves to one general type and that's all very well, but you do need a bit of variety or someone will think you've gone out and bought a rubber stamp!
I think that what makes this book work, in the end, is the fact that each example never extends beyond a double-page spread. That's plenty for someone who isn't making a lifetime's study of an individual tree and it provides enough space to cover the basic shape in leaf and some foliage and flower or fruit details and a colour chart. Each section is completed with a further spread showing the species illustrated in a full-size painting, which will more than satisfy those who do want a little more detail.
The book covers 24 species, but you will find that some will be more familiar than others. The book is designed to have a market in the UK and the USA so each will have to look at some more exotic collections to be able to find every variety covered. This also means that you need to know which are your own native species or some of your woodlands might look a little, well, specialist, if an arboriculturalist starts looking to closely.
If you have even a passing interest in trees and you care about how you paint them, there's much in this book of value and interest.
* Artbookreview.net *
