It's back to the watery world of Jean Haines with this chunky 176-page whopper. This…
Atmospheric Flowers In Watercolour, Jean Haines – Book Review
176 pages. Ā This book is about Jean Haines’ atmospheric style of painting as much as it’s about painting flowers. Ā Anybody serious about painting flowers will probably be looking for books on photo-realistic paintings that belong in biological textbooks. Ā No, although Jean obviously uses flowers as the main subject matter in this book (which includes some step by step demonstrations) this book is more about the style than the substance. Ā All her paintings have a feeling of paint or water being spilt on them, with colours running away and doing weird things. Ā But it takes real talent to do that sort of thing to the right degree in the right places and to still end up with an attractive painting. Ā If you’ve looked at my previous posts, you’ll have seen that I’ve tried mimicking Jean’s style a couple of times (both times with flowers) but in both cases any runny atmospheric stuff in them looks a bit contrived. Ā It’s all very liberating though and I really should try to extend this style to another subject matter area (i.e. landscapes).
Jean’s more passionate about her gardening than I am: I don’t see myself ever knowing the name of anything in my garden or anything that I find on the internet that’s worth painting. Ā The only place where I refuse to go along with her suggestions is on colour selection. Ā Jean would rather I had a huge collection of colours and pick out the one that’s the best match to a particular flower. Ā Me though, I’m sticking to picking my three primaries and an earthy colour or two and mix up the closest thing I could to the colour of the flower. Ā Jean should follow my lead and chill out a bit more.
Still, I do like this book. Ā It has loads of tips, techniques and demonstrations in it. Ā It has everything really. Ā I’m keen to see more of this technique with other subject matter and have added another Jean Haines tome to my Amazon wishlist. Ā And it’s not as if I have an aversion to painting flowers – there’s an Ann Blockley book on painting flowers on my wishlist. Ā Jean Haines scores four palettes.
[Addendum. Ā Months later, I’ve found that Jean Haines’ Atmospheric Watercolours is a better introduction to her style and technique and that this book should be seen more of an extension of that book into flowers. Ā I’m dropping this one down to three palettes.]
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