Create Perfect Paintings, Nancy Reyner – Book Review

I already knew that this was about composition but Frank Webb’s book on that subject is amazing and scored five palettes.  So what was it about this one that made me want it?  It’s that it’s organised differently, describing a method of critiquing my own paintings (or someone else’s).  The critiquing methodology (“the viewing game”) is described as a ten step process and a bit of structuring is never a bad thing.

Anyway, the book kicks off with about 30 pages of scene setting.  Nancy talks about how it’s trying to establish terminology that will be used throughout the book but there are also lots of compositional principles in there.  It’s a very good start to the book – this was all important stuff that the rest of the book feeds off.

Then we have about 20 pages on “the play phase”.  I thought this might be about pre-painting exercises (the sort of thing Jean Haines likes writing about) but this is Nancy’s term for actually doing the painting.  I found most of this section to be a bit unfocused, but there were some useful nuggets in there.

And then we get to the main course.  50 pages on a ten step process on how to critique a painting.  There are ten separate steps and within each step, Nancy lists common issues, gives examples of paintings that would pass or fail the tests and gives a list of questions to be asked.  This is outstanding.  All very specific and detailed.  It was worth getting the book just for this section.  For watercolour I might need to be doing some of this critiquing while I paint as problems will be difficult to correct but for oil pastels (and maybe markers and/or inktense pencils) I really can do this at the end of the play phase and then try to correct the work.

There are a couple of chapters after this with miscellaneous tips.  The high spot in there was four pages describing a really simple critique shortcut that can be followed mid-painting (as opposed to the full ten point plan that requires stopping painting, taking a deep breath and readjusting).  It’s a simple four step process that seems really obvious, but if it’s that obvious why isn’t everybody doing it already?  I think it’s genius.  The rest of those final two chapters, though, didn’t really teach me much.  Ten pages on how to mix (oil) colours was way over the top and a wee bit condescending.

Anyway, the final rating.  It’s a great book, a fine complement to Webb’s Dynamic Compisition.  It gets five stars from me on Amazon but I don’t think it quite makes it into the galactico class, so I’m giving it four palettes, an excellent score.

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