Watercolor Gift

Watercolour Trees by Terry Harrison - ISBN # 1-84448-050-X

Trees are one of my favorite subjects to paint in the entire world. They have so much character, variety and down-to-earth roots while their branches blow (and bend) freely in the wind - whether it be a light summer breeze barely stirring the leaves or a full gale northerner shaking & shivering the forest with it’s gusto.

It is always nice to find another tree enthusiast - painter or not a painter - tree people are generally really terrificly nice people … I found this book at the local Hobby Lobby store and could not resist getting it for my art library. One reason I keep buying art books is that whenever I teach art classes or have art workshops, my books tend to leave with a student who needs it as a reference or inspiration to grow more in finding themselves as an artist or just to be inspired to get back to creating their art.

I read the book and I enjoyed it very much. He has some great ideas and tips for painting trees … though I am not sure that I agree about tree trunks needing to be shades of green … all the trees I’ve been intimately acquainted with in Iowa and Texas have had brown bark and limbs for the most part except for specialty trees like birches - my artistic license is to add oranges, blues and any other color that strikes my fancy at the moment whether it be browns based or not - today I was adding blue & orange and black to my brown watercolor pencil tree trunk while drawing & painting at lunch. And he really puts a credit card to good usage as a painting tool LOL … I don’t think it would work well for me with my vision problems - a light touch usually works better than too heavy handed or not even on the paper as I tend to be since I have no depth perception and cannot tell where I am in relation to the paper until after it is too late to change it - watercolors are not nearly as forgiving as oils for vision caused happy accidents.

You can tell by the spelling of watercolor that he is English - they spell it watercolour while we in the US spell it as watercolor. Spelling aside, he had good tips & tricks and very easy to read & understand for beginners but just as useful & interesting for intermediate to advanced or expert painters as well - I particularly like how he goes into detail about using masking fluid and how easy it is to color it to make it easier to see on white paper - he said it in an easy to understand and replicate manner which is something I really appreciate. He did not assume that I already knew what he was talking about (I didn’t since I don’t use masking fluid) but it did not come across as talking down to me either - informational and interesting was how all of the book came across to me. I enjoyed his writing and the demonstrations were very good.

Hope you enjoy the book. Paint lots of trees! Each one will teach you something new about trees, yourself and painting.

This week’s featured art is Palm Tree Ballet #1 by Barbara Burns

Palm Tree Ballet #1 by Barbara Burns

New art featured weekly, courtesy of the artists at Imagekind.

Tags: Barbara Burns, Palm Tree Ballet #1, Imagekind, Watercolour Trees by Terry Harrison, Watercolor Painting