Painting Successful Watercolours From Photographs, Geoff Kersey – Book Review

I’m struggling to find much to say about this one. It does pretty well exactly what it says on the tin.  I’ve not counted them but there must be 100+ examples of photos that Geoff took and paintings that he put together that were inspired by the photos.  Each example only has a photo and a painting; in some cases there may be a preliminary sketch or a close up of an interesting feature in the painting but this isn’t a book of step-by-step instructions.  In all these examples, Geoff talks about how he got from the photo to the painting and why: what he added or moved or left out or made bigger or made smaller or changed the value of or blurred or changed the colour of.  And he does have a voice – this isn’t one of those books that sounds like it was written by a dalek.  I also like how he’s not dogmatic about all the changes he makes – he presents everything only as his opinion.

I can’t deny that what it does it does well.  This is something that many other books will spend 2-4 pages discussing and Geoff manages to fill up 128 pages.  By the end I was exhausted and a little bored.  I do a lot of paintings from photos but do I really need this book?  I suspect not. I guess it might be useful to flick through now and again, looking at the photos, covering up Geoff’s paintings and thinking about what changes I’d make.  But that’s clutching at straws.

This feels harsh but I’m going to give this one two palettes.