Dynamic Watercolours, Jane Betteridge – Book Review

This one’s a 144 page paperback and is absolutely packed with ideas.  While it’s a paperback, it feels more resilient than other paparbacks, with the covers being a couple of inches too wide and folded inwards, meaning that it won’t end up with scruffy corners.  The first 10% is the usual stuff on basic materials and is mercifully brief.  The last 10% is the usual closing bit on forging your own path and is mercifully brief (although the idea about producing a series of paintings is interesting).   But the 80% in the middle is where the interesting stuff is.  In theory half of the 80% is about the surface and half about what goes on it but the distinction wasn’t obvious in places.  But who cares?  There were some great ideas there.

Some were ideas I already knew about and have used.  Salt, cling film, acrylic inks, granulation fluid.  Even though I knew about these techniques, there’s still new stuff there for me, like exactly when to add the salt to the painting (which is different for chunky salt and table salt).

There was stuff in there that I don’t see myself using.  Gold leaf, gilding flakes, bronzing powder, contour relief.  Bit of a common metallic theme going through these.

And there was stuff I’m itching to try.  I want to try out crackle paste and use acrylic inks to fill the cracks.  I want to stick road maps, takeaway menus, maths papers, cut up rejected paintings, Sun newspaper clippings and faces torn out of the TV guide all onto card, cover them with watercolour ground and paint over them.  I want to try out irridescent/pearlescent medium.  I might try out skeleton leaves.  Or gauze.  I’m going to be spending a lot at Ken Bromley.  Or on Amazon, which is more expensive, but I do have an Amazon gift balance sitting there waiting.

Another thing about this book is that it includes four demonstrations.  These illustrate a lot of the techniques really helpfully, giving me more to take away than (for example) the inspiration that I get from looking at Ann Blockley paintings.  In particular, it helps to see the brands of the special products Jane uses.  The demos (and examples of completed paintings) also show how to keep things simple and how make impressionistically imaginative use of colours.

It’s a good book but not food enough for that fourth palette.  This one gets three.