Ann Blockley’s Watercolour Workshop – Book Review

This is my second Ann Blockley Book.  The first, Experimental Landscapes In Watercolour, was full of amazing paintings with explanations of how Ann had managed to achieve the textures in them.  It was inspirational and scored an easy four palettes.  This book is different, and I think it’s even better.  This book, you see, includes seven demonstrations.  I’m not one for the hand holding step-by-step instructions that you see in beginners’ books but these aren’t step by step instructions: they really are demonstrations.  There’s a subtle difference in the wording: it’s all about “this is what I did next” rather that “do this next”.  And after feeling inspired by Ann’s other book, I found it really useful to see step-by-step photos of how she produces these paintings.

I found the book to be choc full of useful tips.  It was good to read these tips within the main text of the book – somehow this makes me want to experiment more than when Ann talks about her methods within the commentaries to paintings.  I now want to try out negative painting.  I want to use wacky colours in the landscape just because they look good.  I want to use clingfilm and those net bags that satsumas come in.  I want to buy some watercolour pencils.

But, above all, I want to find hints of reality within the abstraction.  The last chapter in the book is the finest.  Ann shows us how she can throw loads of abstract colour and texture on a page, leave it to dry and then turn the resulting abstract painting into something closer to reality.  This can mean cropping and rotating the painting and adding extra colour (maybe via negative painting) to draw out whatever she’s seen hiding in there.

At one point I dropped this down to four palettes, thinking I was making it too easy for books to get five palettes.  But I’ve had another rethink.  This book is worthy of five palettes.

🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨