This book keeps popping up on my Amazon recommendations. When I took a look inside,…
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 adding books to the list without reading reviews of them first. There are reviews on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com but they’re often a bit vague. I prefer reading reviews that artists have published online, either on their web pages or on YouTube. And there just aren’t enough reviews out there. So rather than sit around complaining, I’m going to post up reviews of all fourteen art instruction books that I have in my collection. There are no links to Amazon here – I don’t think blogspot allows me to do that.
Anyway, first up is Frank Clarke’s Paintbox. It was the first book I bought after going to that short watercolour lesson at CenterParcs. It’s 128 pages long (a common length for one of these books) and very basic. And basic was just what I needed at the time. He takes the reader step by step through eight simple paintings with little interludes on how to paint very basic versions of things like people, sheep and boats. And he doesn’t have any green in his palette, which makes me happy.
For someone’s very first watercolour book, it’s not too bad. If you were buying someone their first set of watercolours as a present, this is the book that you should include with it. Obviously, though, you’d buy the book first, look up the colours Frank uses, buy an empty watercolour box and fill it with his colours, wouldn’t you?
But for anyone else, the book would be a waste of money. It can only be someone’s first book, never their second. I seem to remember seeing a Paintbox2 around a few years ago. I see no reason why anybody would want to buy that book. On balance, three stars.
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