So, after that failed experiment, I thought I'd experiment some more. Let's face it, I had nothing to lose. So I had some crumpled aluminium foil...
Posts that are not about paintings
Failed Experiment Part 1
Today's painting was an experiment that went really badly. I sketched out a composition first. A bit of sky, a field in the background and a...
I’m on Instagram!
A friend who's a full time artist told me the other day that I really needed to set up an Instagram account and put loads of hashtags against my...
Keep Painting, Gordon MacKenzie – Book Review
This one is 144 pages long and the first thing I notice is that it doesn’t feel like other art instruction hardbacks. The cover is warm and matty...
The Q1 2019 Poll
I thought it was about time I checked out public opinions on the pile of artwork that I had sitting around waiting to either be framed or put to...
Realistic Abstracts, Kees Van Aalst – Book Review
This one is 160 pages long, but it’s one of those square shaped ones with smaller pages and a bit more white space so, content-wise, is probably...
Mastering Composition, Ian Roberts – Book Review
144 pages plus DVD. I thought I'd check out a book on composition and this book by Ian Roberts has been getting rave reviews for some time. So I...
Experimental Landscapes In Watercolour, Ann Blockley – Book Review
128 pages. This is a well-titled book. Any piece of artwork is an experiment. You never know how it's going to work out. Especially when you...
Learn To Paint People Quickly, Hazel Soan – Book Review
This book was 112 pages long but felt much shorter. Ah, maybe that's because it's A5 sized, meaning it's more like a 56 page long pamphlet that's...
Atmospheric Flowers In Watercolour, Jean Haines – Book Review
176 pages. This book is about Jean Haines' atmospheric style of painting as much as it's about painting flowers. Anybody serious about painting...
Painting Successful Watercolours From Photographs, Geoff Kersey – Book Review
I'm struggling to find much to say about this one. It does pretty well exactly what it says on the tin. There are 26 extended examples of photos...
Watercolour Painting, Tom Hoffmann – Book Review
This one was expensive but it was worth every penny. It's quite a big one at 208 pages. This feels like the definitive stage 3 in a journey that...
Painting Abstracts, Rolina Van Vliet – Book Review
Right. We're into the modern day at last. It's late 2018 and I've finally started to feel like a decent artist, producing paintings that I can...
Terry Harrison’s Complete Guide To Watercolour Landscapes – Book Review
I'm still in the dark days of being a terrible artist and only looking for book bargains, but I struck gold with this one. It's 192 pages long and...
30-Minute Landscapes, Paul Talbot-Greaves – Book Review
This is the shortest book in my collection at only 64 pages. I can only imagine it was going cheap. I was still looking only at bargains when I...
Watercolour Landscapes, Richard Taylor – Book Review
At the time I bought this book I was only painting landscapes and my artwork was terrible. It was so bad that I was loathe to spend money on books...
Learn To Paint Watercolour With The Experts, Crawshaw/Bellamy/Ranson/Soan – Book Review
This is a weird one that I'd forgotten I even owned. It looks big at 224 pages but when you open it up, you find that it's made up of four short...
Big Brush Watercolour, Ron Ranson – Book Review
This one's one step up from Frank Clarke. It's about painting landscapes in a fairly loose manner. Using a big brush as it says in the name of the...
Frank Clarke’s Paintbox – Book Review
I've been tinkering around with the Amazon wishlist recently, looking for books that I might want for my birthday in the summer. And I don't like...
Colour Charts
With four new colours joining my palette this week (or five if you count cadmium red, now promoted from associate to full member), I thought I...