Line And Wash Painting: Liz Chaderton – Book Review

On to the book.  Just like with Liz’s book on painting animals, the advice is all packed in pretty tightly just like the notes that I make for myself.  And just like that other book, this one can be accused of going off on a tangent in places.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We have seven chapters.  The first one is on equipment.  Not much use to me because I’ve already decided that I’ll be using Liquidraw fineliners and W&N watercolours.  But I appreciate that there definitely needs to be something there about the options for inking tools and all the different pros and cons.  This section’s definitely comprehensive.

Next is a chapter on inking.  I thought this fell a little short.  I expected to read more about drawing, and drawing buildings in particular.  Stuff about starting with a big vertical line in the middle.  Starting with simple shapes then adding windows, doors and other details.  Even all the stuff about perspective that I already know.  There were brief discussions on types of mark and on how to hold a pen but not much more than that.  And, bearing in mind this was a book about line and wash and not about ink and wash, it was a bit jarring to see some stuff here that seemed to be more about painting in ink than about drawing.

The third chapter on watercolours was really basic stuff and not much help to me.  The same was true for the fourth chapter, all about line and wash techniques.

And then we get to the last three chapters on further experimentation.  Normally I’d expect this to make up about 10% of a book but here it’s 46%!  The three chapters cover collage, different surfaces and introducing a third medium.  Interesting stuff and very comprehensive (not just ideas but specific details on what to do including warnings about things that could go wrong) but it felt like a luxury when the necessities had been skimped on.

The best bits for me were right at the start of the book.  Three inspirational paintings of buildings (including the one in the cover) before we even get to any written words.  These paintings all show quite detailed ink drawings with imaginative, impressionistic watercolour overlays.  These are the paintings that I wanted to hear about.  There was also a really tightly packed three-page introduction before the first chapter that talked about this style of painting.  The pros and cons of applying the ink before the paint or vice versa, how the paint wash doesn’t need to relate to the linework, etc. In fact there’s half a page with a table of eleven tips that’s great.  I was just hoping for a book that expanded on these tips rather than talking about painting with inks and further experimentation.

So how do I grade this book?  Well it scores high on inspiration, high on ideas that I don’t yet need (all the future experimentation) and low on the ideas that I was looking for.  People may well ask what it was that I wanted to hear about beyond that half page table in the introduction but I don’t know the answer: I was hoping to find the answer in this book.

According to my rating policy, this is a two palette book.  I don’t regret wishlisting it but I’m not sure I’d buy it again if my house burnt down.  This could, of course, change at some point if I become interested in some of the experimental possibilities in the second half of the book.  And anybody looking for ideas for how to move beyond plain simple line and wash painting should definitely check out this book.  I feel guilty about giving this rating as Liz has a great YouTube channel but, yeah, it’s two palettes from me.

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