Line & Wash In The Urban Landscape, Neil Whitehead – Book Review

The Enterprise Crew collection has been moving more quickly than the bathroom work, so I’ve had enough time on my hands to buy, study and read another book. This one’s a 128 page paperback and was going quite cheap on Amazon.

One look at the cover will tell what this one’s about. It’s urban sketching but with the looseness racked up to eleven. The fineliner work is fast and loose and the watercolour is pretty random but strangely compelling. This is a direction I’ve been wanting to take my dash & splash paintings in and this looks like the right book for me at the right time.

I normally start these reviews by listing the chapters and their lengths but this is a book that transcends chapters. There’s a contents page but this feels more like one long story. And it’s not a book where you can look up a chapter on (say) how to go crazy when choosing colours because tips on that are scattered throughout the book. There are six or seven demos in there but lots of examples of single images where it feels like a demo just looking at them. And it didn’t take long to read this book, which means that it’s one of those books that mimics the author’s painting style. It’s fast and loose.

There were lots of interesting tips in this book, many of them easy to glide past without noticing, so it’s important to pay attention and not just drift off and flow with the paint. But there are also a lot of lessons that aren’t written down. This is one of those books to be inspired by: one where you look at the crazy stuff the author has done and think I can do that. Or I can be even crazier. Neil just throws away all the rules and creates some amazing artwork.

This review has been fast and loose, which I think means that it’s had an impact on me. Rating-wise, it was definitely worth the money, so gets three palettes. But it’s not good enough for four. I felt it could do with a little. more on how Neil chooses his colours – we have lots of examples of his choices with, in some cases, the rationale behind them. But I’d have liked to hear about how Neil chooses colours generally rather than why he chose particular colours on particular occasions. But, yeah, good book. Buy this if you want to loosen up your urban sketching.

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You can find this book and more reviews of it on Amazon UK here. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.