Vibrant Watercolours, Hazel Lale – Book Review

I put this book on my list because I like the crazy colours that Hazel uses in her work.  I was hoping that this might be the book I’ve been longing for on the use of impressionistic colours but let’s come to that later.

This is one of those books like Ron Stocke’s and Joseph Stoddard’s that falls a little flat.  They’re books that these artists “had in them” and wrote and published but that don’t really have defined target markets.  There’s too much at the beginning on the real basic stuff like the difference between tubes and pans and then the usual handy tips on perspective, planning values, composition.  And then you get the demonstrations, which is where most of the value lies.

Let’s talk about this book in particular.  The five demonstrations, in particular the two that were portraits.  They gave me ideas about how to paint differently.  On the other hand, I didn’t like that they were instructional (“do this, do that” rather than “this is what I did”).  They had too many steps, some of which were too vague – “keep building up the colour” or whatever.  And they were all a bit samey.  I get the idea.  We’re building up a painting in multiple layers.  Painting different subjects isn’t enough variety for me – I need different techniques too.  And there was one bit that really grated.  One step tells us to do some colour runs, testing out lots of different colours on a separate sketch and working out which work best.  A great idea.  But then when the next step tells us to “paint Winsor lemon over the whole figure” that lesson’s totally lost.  Is the artist going to choose their own colour or are they just going to copy the author?

There’s a strange bit at the beginning where Hazel talks about the colours in her palette.  She tells us that she has two palettes: one with four light colours and one with sixteen dark colours.  Does she understand what we mean by palettes?  To me that’s a palette of twenty colours.  The palette is a portfolio of colours.  The same word is used for the tin you store and mix them in but that’s not what we’re talking about here.  “You’re a woman of style, Hazel.  Tell us about your wardrobe.”  “Well, actually, I have two.  One is from MFI and in the main bedroom and has all my casual stuff, and the other is in the spare room and…”

Anyway, if I had to guess, I’d say this book is aimed at beginners because of all the basic stuff at the start and the instructional nature of the demos.  But what beginner is going to be interested in the crazy colours?  Hazel should really have written two books: a simple one for beginners with normal colours and one for more advanced artists on how to add a bit of zing and vibrancy.

There’s still stuff of value here, though.  There’s the multi layer painting that’s in the demos and there are the pictures in the book that can be inspiring.  It’s just a shame that there’s not more discussion about how Hazel chose the colours in those pictures – that’s what I was really hoping for.

And the biggest laugh I got from this book was this painting.   Nice painting, great colours – this is what’s best about the book.  But was this always a painting of some barns, or did it start off as a male nude and then get changed?  You can’t unsee it once you’ve seen it.

Overall score?  Two palettes.  There’s some stuff in there to inspire and some interesting examples of multi layer painting but I don’t think I’d learn anything more from rereading this.  It’s worth reminding people at this point that I’m trying to be stingy with palettes on these scores.  Two means that while I might not buy this book if my entire collection was stolen, it’s not one that I regret adding to my Amazon list.  It does have redeeming qualities – I’m giving it three stars on Amazon.  This isn’t like Rate My Takeaway on YouTube where most places score 10/10 and anything less than 9/10 is really poor.

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