Pure Watercolour Painting: Peter Cronin – Book Review

I was delighted to find he’d written a couple of books: one on sketching and this book on watercolour.  This book is a 144 page paperback with one of those covers that’s bent inwards so that it will never go dog eared.  At the time of writing, it’s the second best selling art instruction book on Amazon (no doubt because of Watercolour Challenge) and is often unavailable because of the high demand.

I’ve now bought and read a copy.  Looking at the contents page, it’s not until page 16 that we get past all the introductions (I’ve made it through Olympic opening ceremonies more quickly) before moving on to materials, how to use watercolour and a load of demonstrations.  It’s sounding like a run of the mill beginners’ book so far.  Is this going to just be another two or three palette book?

In a word, no.  This is one for more advanced artists.  It’s been a long time since I learned anything from the materials and how to paint chapters but I was picking up new ideas right from the start.  Whenever I’ve mixed up watery paint, I’ve dabbed a bit of paint on the palette, then added loads of water, dirtying my water jar in the process.  Peter talks about starting with a puddle of clean water and adding the paint.  Why have I never thought of this?

And throughout the whole book, there are lots more really interesting ideas, sometimes hidden in the demonstrations, but still great ideas.  I like Peter’s writing style.  It’s human.  He drops in lots of little anecdotes about life as an artist (and husband) which just kept me reading.  The artwork in the book is inspiring too, and backs up everything Peter has to say in the text.  The demonstrations are prescriptive (do this, do that,…) which I don’t normally like but I can forgive Peter this as he does tell us at the beginning that we don’t have to follow his instructions exactly.

Anyway, enough of this box ticking (number of ideas, writing style, level of inspiration, etc).  Is there anything to make this book special?  Well, yes there two things.

First, there’s Peter’s three stage approach to painting.  I won’t go over all the details – you need to buy the book for that.  But his simple approach is one that creates light and atmosphere, something everyone should be aiming for.  A by-product of Peter’s approach is that it also takes care of values.  I’ve read so many books talking about how values are so important and that I should be coming up with a value plan before painting and, to be fair, whenever I have done this my paintings have been great.  But after reading this book, I’ll instead be planning the three stages of my painting and the values will just take care of themselves.

Second, this has to be the go to book for atmospheric watercolour painting.  Peter talks about bright sunlight, evening sun, looking into the sun, rain, mist/fog and snow paintings and, in each case talks about what the artist should do with shapes, edges, colours and tones to achieve the required atmosphere.  And in four of those six cases, there’s a complete demonstration to illustrate his recommendations.

I have a feeling that this book will be a game changer for me.  I went into it hoping to learn something but worried that I might have picked up a beginners’ book.  What I didn’t expect was to be handing out five palettes.  Wow.

🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨