Customer Reviews

Painting Close-Focus Flowers in Watercolor

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I love looking at this book! For years I have been filing away myriads of floral photos with the hope that one day I might attempt to capture them in paint. I muse over these photos from time to time wondering just how a painter might do them justice. I need wonder no more. In Ann Pember's "Painting Close-Focus Flowers in Watercolor", she has been able to demonstrate a variety of step-by-fluid-step techniques to bring high drama to the world of simple blooms. Her close-ups of hollyhocks, gloxinias; and peonies float upon the pages which are jam-packed with carefully chosen, eye-pleasing colors. Thankfully, the vibrancy of Ms. Pember's palette has been well-reproduced in the printing process. There is so much valuable information packed into this book. One should read it from cover to cover initially to pick up all the helpful hints. What a wealth of knowledge Ms. Pember has shared with her readers including: preferences for specific papers, paints and brushes; how to avoid turning paints into "mud"; and my toughest assignment - how to see shapes and values as patterns; to mention a few. Ann Pember's close-up compositions are outstanding. Even if my attempts pale in comparison to this well-seasoned artist's, she is very encouraging. She reinforces the idea that given some degree of perseverence and practice, we too may develop our own means of capturing nature's beauties "up-close and personal".

I really don't think that any artist can survive with just one book on the shelf. This book is a great resource with beautiful step by step photographs. I recommend it to someone with a little experience and foundation. This book is not too intensive but also does not hold your hand at every step. A resource to add to your library. It helped me relax my style a bit.

Ann Pember, author of PAINTING CLOSE-FOCUS FLOWERS IN WATERCOLOR has a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in fashion design and illustration. Before she became a free-lance illustrator, she worked as a commercial artist for many years. Photos in her book show the professional studio where she works. Technically, her work is nearly perfect. I don't particularly care for her rendering of her subject matter as it stikes me as too "commercial" and not very painterly at all, but much can be learned from her book if you have had no other exposure.

Ms. Pember's background in fashion design and illustration are apparent in her work. She takes the reader from photographs of flowers to watercolors of those photographed flowers in several steps. She reveals how the eye is attracted by asymetry (offsetting of the center) and the placement of elements; how backlighting and focused lighting affect the appearance of the subject; how surfaces and background affect the paint and matter in the execution of a watercolor. She spends some time addressing color, but Ms. Pember is not a colorist. She is more concerned with line and the arrangement of elements in a design.

The end result from my perspective are flowers that are somewhat overcontrolled, although she gives the unpracticed eye the exact opposite impression. In the end, her flowers are contrived and not original. The watercolorist can acquire some interesting tips for creating pleasing paintings, but if producing art for commercial purposes is not your goal you may find Pember's book less rewarding.

I bought this book on the advice of an online friend, and I'm so glad I did!

My favorite aspect of the book is that it contains LOTS of step-by-step demonstrations, and the pencil sketches for each demo are included, so I can enlarge them and paint along with Ann Pember. Admittedly, some of the sketches are quite faint and a bit difficult to see, but I've managed to work with them. Also, a few of the drawings are very detailed, so if you're more interested in learning the basics of a specific technique than you are in completing a whole painting, you may only want to reproduce a small section of the sketch instead of the whole piece. Every project (even the smallest,) includes a materials list, which I found quite helpful. It was nice to know what I'd need before I started a project, and there was no chance of getting halfway through a painting, only to find out that I was missing some crucial materials.

I like it that Ms Pember starts us out with the basics, and progresses to more complex techniques. She teaches you how to mix and mingle colors, as well as different ways to add texture to your paintings. She also discusses the use of triads and limited palettes, and demonstrates lifting techniques and ways to vary your edges. Of course, she applies all of this information to flower painting, and she does a nice job of teaching how to paint the different parts of flowers. I particularly enjoyed the section on painting backgrounds, as those can be a real challenge for me!

After Ms Pember teaches you the basic techniques, she presents five detailed "putting it all together" demonstrations of complete paintings, which I found to be extremely helpful. Many books teach the basics, but leave you hanging when it's time to combine the steps into a complete painting, while others gloss over the techniques and provide impressive-looking demonstrations of gorgeous paintings, that turn out to have crucial steps missing so there's no way for the reader to "paint along" with the artist. That's not the case here -- I was able to understand Ms Pember every step of the way.

I highly recommend this book if you want to paint vibrant, colorful close-focus florals. My only warning is that you won't find large bouquets here, and there isn't a vase or lace tablecloth in sight, so if you're a more traditional flower painter, this may not be the book for you. (You could still learn a lot of fun techniques and could probably benefit from the information on color mixing and how to paint the details of a flower, but there are probably many other books out there that would be better for you.)

Thanks for reading my review!

w/c, book a wonderfull book to have in my collection , it is always close on hand to me.

Ann Pember did a fabulous job with this book, the only negative thing I would say is that the cover is misleading. They say step by step, and feature the dahia, which is what I wanted to paint. They don't show details about this particular flower. It's fine, and she had lots of great instructions, but that flower is really why I bought the book. I do love her work.

very useful exercises to grow your talent for both beginners and experienced painters. I really love this technique and the results are just breath taking

book delivered in great shape and filled the research needs I had at the time. LJ