Atmospheric Animals In Watercolour: Jean Haines – Book Review

Where do I start?  Well, this book is a hardback and 160 pages long.  There are five chapters in the book but apart from the first, 30 page, chapter that talks about equipment and materials, it blended into one big long experience.  The chapters didn’t have names and there was only a very faint number in the background to tell me where new chapters started.  If anything, maybe chapter 2 is about simple studies, chapter 3 about getting noses and eyes right, chapter 4 about textures and chapter 5 about closing the book down with some talk about abstraction and about developing our own style.

Throughout the book there are loads of demonstrations (demonstrations, not instructions) that gradually get more complex with the reader hardly noticing.  Like I say, it’s more like one long experience than about a book with chapters.  Demo-wise, there’s an elephant, a hedgehog, a dog’s nose, a dog, a cat’s eye, a cat, giraffe spots, another elephant, a koala, a starfish and an octopus.  It all sounds far too demo-centred than I’d normally like but the demos demonstrated so many interesting techniques that I was totally immersed in them.

There are paintings in there of plenty of other animals too, not just for decoration bit also for a bit of discussion on painting styles.  Of the top of my head there were lions, a panda, a bears, a turtle, dragonflies, butterflies, a pig, sheep, hares, moles and more dogs, cats and giraffes.  These paintings, just like the ones in the demos, are genuinely inspiring.

Jean’s style of painting is, as you know, very loose and watery.  Before now, I’d read her book on atmospheric flowers and her more general book on atmospheric painting.  The second of these is a nice grounding in her style and (in my opinion) important pre-reading before attempting the book on flowers.  This book on painting animals, though, I think could stand alone.  It’s not necessary to read the more general book before starting on this one but that general book could be interesting to anyone reading this book and wondering how that style could be extended to landscapes and to flowers.  In fact I’m predicting that we’ll see a book on Atmospheric Landscapes In Watercolour at some point and that it will be going onto my wishlist as soon as I get wind of it.

As well as the demos and the inspiration, this book provides some great tips.  There are lots of ideas on creating textures using non-watercolour media (crackle paste, watercolour ground, etc) that all sound interesting and that, in some cases, I’ve already used but never on watercolour paper.  She has some ideas on creating home made inks and granulation fluid that might be useful to some people but not to me when I can buy them in shops.  My favourite tips, though, were around colour.  The idea of testing out colours before painting using the dancing ladies technique was really interesting and I liked what was a general theme throughout the book that including one extra colour that doesn’t fit with all the others (like, say, a viridian when the rest of the animal is in reds, yellows and oranges) can be really effective.  That’s my sort of style.

There’s a general sense of positivity throughout the book.  Jean’s been accused in the past of writing in a me me me style but this book is very much you you you focussed.  There are some weird bits I could have done without that talk about motivational tips we can pick up from all the different animals but if that’s the price to pay for the motivational style of this book, then I won’t complain.

Time to sum things up.  This book is motivational, inspirational and full of tips.  This book did something the Liz Chaderton book didn’t: it made me believe I can paint animals and it made me want to start painting animals.  Probably starting tomorrow.  The Tim Pond book on drawing animals that’s been hanging around near the bottom of my wishlist is now moving upward.  2022 could be the year of the animal painting for me.

Am I sounding a bit crazed?  That’s because I am.  This is a great book and scores the maximum five palettes from me.  It could be a game changer.  And being a substantial feeling hardback, it’s also great value.

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