Light And Shade In Watercolour, Hazel Soan – Book Review

I feel so guilty for saying this, because I do like all her other books in my collection, but this is a clunker from Hazel.

I was hoping that this book would all be about highlights and shadows and maybe atmospherics.  Something like the James Gurney Book that’s my wishlist but a bit more geared to impressionistic painting than to realistic (which I understand to be James’ focus).  But it’s not.  These areas get some coverage but Hazel’s Book is almost entirely about values.  The book’s been misleadingly titled in my view.

Still, values are always something I could learn more about.   Can the book teach me anything in this area?  Unfortunately the answer is no.  I know that it’s useful to do a pencil sketch beforehand to plan the values.  And I know values are more important than colours.  And that a contract between light and dark is good.  I could go on forever.  This is all stuff that I already know about.  And the book’s very repetitious, going over the same points again and again.  It’s divided into eight or nine chapters but there’s very little distinction between them.

As usual, the artwork in the book is great and inspiring.  But with nothing very useful in the text, it’s not as inspiring the artwork in her other books.  Also, unlike that of Tom Hoffmann and Jeanne Dobie in their books, Hazel’s artwork is actually too complex to work as examples of great use of values.  To illustrate simple points, you need simple examples, and that’s something Hazel doesn’t have.  For example, she shows us a huge painting of four cowboys on horses and only talks about what she’s done with the shirt that one of them is wearing!  I’ll point out once again that I’d still like to see a Hazel Soan book on impressionistic colouring – that’s where Hazel’s paintings would illustrate the points perfectly.

She’s going to hate me for this but I have to be honest and I’m only going to give this book two palettes.