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 been folded in half to make it twice as thick.  So in reviewing this book, I should be bearing in mind my expectations of a pamphlet rather than my expectations of a typical painting instruction book.

When I added this one to my wishlist, I was thinking about Hazel’s quick, sketchy people that I could add to my paintings for a bit of interest (eg Stock LinkedIn Photo With Bike Replaced With Dog and Down T’Mill) that I’d also seen in her subbook within Learn To Paint Watercolour With The Experts a few years ago.  There was some stuff in the book on these sketchy people, which was good.  But there was also useful stuff in there on perspective, shadows, the effect of light coming from different directions and creases in clothes.  All this was really useful and is making me think about being braver in painting people than I’ve been so far.  There was also a chapter on portraits which I don’t see myself ever getting into (and if I did, I’d be looking to go for a big book dedicated to portrait painting first, rather than just arming myself with ten pages of Hazel Soan encouragement).

All in all, for an (effectively) 56 page book, this is actually very good.  It covers all the bases (not especially deeply but what do you expect with 56 pages?) while not wasting any space with flanneling or going off at a tangent.  There’s not a wasted word in this book.  It feels like a good starting point for someone wanting to get serious about painting people – they can start here, decide what areas (portrait, action, nudes,…) they want to know more about and then move onto a book in that specialised area.  But for me, this book is enough for now.  I don’t need to go any deeper into the subject.

The lack of depth means this one scores three palettes.