Book Review: How To Draw & Paint Fairyland by Linda Ravenscroft
ISBN-13: 978-0-7641-3953-6 or ISBN-10: 0-7641-3953-3
I am a big fan of Linda’s artwork and her style of teaching in her books. The book is thoroughly enchanting and inspiring with full color paintings of her own and several other majestic fairy painters.
The instructions are clear and sensible. One example that I love is on page 46 about “Simple Light Sources”. There are four examples shown with explanatory text. It is an excellent reference for someone trying to grasp the reasoning why it is necessary to know where the light is coming from and to show it realistically. Very well done as is the entire book.
Another spectacular reason to buy and use this book for me is that it specifically covers autumn frost on leaves … I’d never really noticed that I had no idea of how to go about conveying that idea and I had never even tried … I have always either painted autumn or winter … no in-between seasonal mixtures … yet it is lovely when handled well by a master artist.
This is the second of Linda’s books that I have bought, read and enjoyed … now to use them to help me improve some of my painting techniques. One thing I had not considered was to create shading washes first and then create a full overall wash second … I want to try that … I think using my pencils, getting them wet and allowing them to dry and adding more color on top and then drying again before adding a washing of color overall may give me some great effects that I have not managed before … time will tell … but I am looking forward to experimenting with more of Linda Ravenscroft’s watercolor techniques. I also own her “How to Draw & Paint Fairies” book.
