Jean Haines’ Atmospheric Watercolours – Book Review

This book is very much focussed on technique rather than on producing finished paintings.  Techniques covered include colourful underpaintings, negative painting, use of salt and clingfilm, picking detail out of abstracts, creating sunburst effects, leaving out the detail and (needless to say) Jean’s watery paint runs.

But this book includes lots of demos so why am I saying it’s about technique rather than about producing finished paintings?  Well, that’s because many of the demos are exercises.  And because Jean says that if any of these exercises turn out to be finished paintings it means you’ve not experimented enough.  You’re painting for the bin, not for the wall!  Even so, I reckon someone sheepishly following these exercises would end up with some frameable works at the end.

I noticed a lot of woolly motivational stuff in this book.  Not enough to detract from the real content but enough to make me mark up Paint Yourself Calm and Paint Yourself Positive as not interested in my Amazon recommendations.

Just as with The Essence Of Watercolour the other day, I found myself unintentionally inspired by some of the creative, impressionistic use of colour in the paintings in the book and would like to see the author write a book on this subject.  It may well be that Jean’s already done this with Colour and Light In Watercolour – a book already sitting on my wishlist.

Finally, I should compare this book to the other Jean Haines book that I’ve read.  I said in my review of Atmospheric Flowers In Watercolour that it was more about style than substance. Well that’s certainly the case with this book, which is all about explaining Jean’s techniques.  In comparison, Atmospheric Flowers is less technique-oriented.  This book would be a better starting point for learning about Jean’s wishywashy style, with Atmospheric Flowers as more of an extension into flowers.  I learned more about Jean’s technique reading this book after having read Atmospheric Flowers whereas if I’d read this book first, all the extra knowledge  I’d have gained from Atmospheric Flowers would have been about flowers rather than technique.

We’re looking at a solid four palettes here.

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