Ready to Paint: Watercolour Doors and Windows

Nov 08

This series just gets better and better and is branching out into areas that others don't touch.

Having given us what is one of the best guides to painting trees there is, we now have this on those little details that can make a building, even one that's really only in the background, believable. The thing about a window is that it's not just a square hole in a wall. It has depth, which gives it shadows and the glass reflects in quite specific ways, which often turn out to be quite a complicated graduation of hues of Payne's Gray. Doors are the same, except that, even closed, they have to give a hint that they lead somewhere. If you don't give your openings character, your building will look flat, deserted and dead.

On top of that, doors and windows have all kinds of furniture - shutters, hinges, porches - often with flowers growing round them - and frames of brick and stone work. There's a lot to get right and Wendy is well known for doing just that.

The Ready to Paint series is based on a set of very detailed step-by-step projects for each of which there is a pre-printed tracing that frees you from the need to get the drawing right before you can start and allows you to concentrate on the use of colours. It's not a substitute for good draughtsmanship of course, but it does mean you don't have to be learning two things at once. If you're beyond the stage of what amounts to advanced painting by numbers, don't dismiss this little book, though, because it contains a wealth of information that goes quite a long way beyond what it initially sets out to do.

Nov 08

Another from the useful Ready to Paint series, this time with Wendy Jelbert. Wendy has written many books on art techniques and always manages to give clear and concise instructions essential for the novice artist.

Wendy explains in her introduction that being able to draw is an advantage for the aspiring artist, but in this book the focus is on the painting as the drawing are already done for the student via easy to trace sketches. For beginners to watercolour this takes some of the pressure off and allows one to concentrate on the actual painting. This is very useful as too much new information can be very energy sapping and off-putting. By providing the sketches ready to trace the artist can get straight into painting and learning the different techniques used and thus be clear on how to gradually transfer them to their own artworks.

Wendy starts with a quick explanation of materials used and how to trace the images and then its straight into the painting.

There are five sketches ready to trace and Wendy breaks each one down into simple easy to follow stages for painting that gradually merge together to bring out the whole image. Each stage has a close up of which part to paint and she also tells the student what colours and brushes to use. Following these instructions the student will be able to concentrate on learning how the paints and mediums work and react together to produce the end artwork. Without the pressure of having to start with drawing the work, something that's also an acquired skill, and easy to get wrong at an early stage in the artwork the student can focus all their attention on learning from the paints and retain that for their own later use.

This is another excellent book in the Ready to Paint series from Search Press and the focus on painting, with drawings already provided will give the most timid student confidence in painting.

Nov 08

Doors and windows? This is certainly a more unusual subject for paintings yet when you think about it any painting that includes buildings will feature them, so why not make a feature out of them? As Wendy Jelbert puts it they are the eyes and mouths of a building and worthy of attention in their own right. This is another title in Search Press' pioneering new Ready To Paint series, which starts off novice artists who want to get some practise with the painting part but aren't too confident about their drawing skills.

There are some lovely studies of doors and windows in here, showing what good subjects for artwork they actually are. Rose Cottage shows a door with roses around it, then there is another wreathed in wisteria and a third in Venice with water lapping and baskets of geraniums. There are windows with shutters, a farmyard scene and a sixth study without instructions for when you are feeling more confident and what to test your skills. This approach to art is nothing like painting by numbers, but more about noticing the structure of a picture by working through several photographed stages. As with the other titles in the series each picture comes with a practical list of which brushes and colors to buy, the size of the finished piece and plenty of sage advice. I am glad that the series has departed from more usual subjects and is now working through the less usual; a useful and enjoyable way of learning to paint.