Turner’s Apprentice, A Watercolour Masterclass: Tony Smibert – Book Review

The book takes a long, long time to get started with a 30-page introduction that really doesn’t say anything and that I’ll never read again. With the book closing with 20 pages of the author’s own Turner-inspired work that looks nothing like Turner, that leaves only about 90 pages of written material in the middle.

And, looking through those 90 pages I can only count eight tips.  I’m amazed that someone can write so much while saying so little.  One of those eight tips is to go to an art gallery, observe Turner’s works closely and try to copy the works or the ideas.  That’s not really a useful tip, is it?  I was hoping this book would do a lot of that work for us by identifying those ideas and saving us the trouble.  I don’t want to say much about those other seven tips because that would give everything away and make the book worthless.

There are some demonstrations in the book which I quite like as they’re not dogmatic.  They’re more like exercises with Tony’s attempts at them than something of Tony’s that the reader’s expected to copy.

There are some great paintings in this book, and it scores highly on inspiration.  I can look at the paintings in the book and think about how Turner put the paint down which, to be fair, is something Tony’s trying to get us to do.

It’s time to make the final judgement.  Thinking about the Turneresque techniques in the book, they have a lot in common with techniques that I’ve seen in three other books: one by Ann Blockley, one by Kees Van Aalst and one by Nita Engle.  I think all three of those books provide better and more passionate explanations of those techniques.  So it’s hard to find a way for me to find a place for Tony’s book on the shelf.  I can think of two vague reasons for buying it: it’s up to you to decide whether they make a case.  The first reason is the look of the book, with all the inspiring work within it.  The second is that the book doesn’t just try to learn from Turner.  It also teaches the reader how to learn from other artists: all the different things to look for, how to identify brushmarks, how to learn from the artist, that kind of thing.  If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, then this could be the book for you.

For me, though, it’s a book that I don’t regret putting on the wishlist but that I wouldn’t buy again if I lost it.  That means it gets two palettes.

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