Customer Reviews

Portrait Painting in Watercolor

5 star:		(4)
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3 star:		(1)
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This is one of the most sought after books on watercolor portraiture. Reid suggests the face and still gets a likeness. He leaves something for the viewer to fill in and be a part of the painting. It takes practice and intuition to bring out the aritists innate intuitive abilities expressed on paper. Reid shows step by step how he approaches his subject. He focuses on contrast and value and immediacy to give the painting life and spontaniety. A valued book to read over and over.

...The book is brown, in colour and concept. Charles' book on Natural Painting is much more appealing. However this book is well written and illustrated although not colorfully. There is some interesting insight into portrait technique -- but realistically, I doubt if Charles learned to paint this way himself ... his talent is inborn and self-taught. His portraits are startling and unique in their ability to capture likenesses from a swirling mass of tone and/or color sometimes using only subtlist details of shade and highlight. The facial details that we plebians see (2 eyes, nose, mouth, chin, hair) have little to do with Charles' images -- sometimes many key features are ill defined or undefined ... however he always manages to capture the likeness. He sees in a different way -- I think he sees primarily tones (shades of gray) more than anything -- color seems to be secondary to him (this is apparent in his Natural Painting book too) -- yet he also has a unique and insightful perspective on colors, especially skin tones. A good book.

It must be said that Charles Reid is very much into color values. Much of the illustration in the book is done in values with no color, using shades of grey. For a novice wanting pretty pictures--this is not the book. For a painter wishing to learn portrait painting much like better art schools teach, this is an excellent book to have on hand. It is very difficult for beginners to get value with color; a skill learned over time. The book forces the student to observe different values within color, if they follow the examples given. The best way to show form is to use values/tones of color or shades of grey. This book does not disappoint.

The text and illustrations are just as described and exactly what I had hoped for. The condition of the book is better than I expected, with no dog-eared or damaged pages, no scribbles or library labels and no other damage; even the dust jacket was in one piece. (I purchased a used book.) All in all I am quite happy with it.

Daughter attended MIAD and has always wanted this book for soooo long.......I am not familiar with the book but she was tickled to death to aquire it...."awesome dad"......I take that as this book is useful and admired by art and design students/graduates past and present.....though out of print.....(jmo)