Most Helpful Customer Reviews
76 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Use negative space to positively improve your watercolors., July 20, 2004
Negative space has long been one of my favorite art principles, but one that few artists truly seem to understand or take full advantage of. So when I saw the title of this book, I was more than a little intrigued. After pouring through this book, I was left with a lasting, positive impression. Linda Kemp not only understands negative space, but she capitalizes upon it to create bold, stunning and truly unique watercolor paintings. She offers the reader a wide array of creative ideas that develop negative space into focal centerpieces, and clearly explains the various techniques used to pull them off, such as developing lively, bold underpaintings as the basis for later paintings and how to create textures that further emphasize negative space. I am very impressed with this book. While the author's style of painting is quite different from my own, and may well differ greatly from your's, she offers many fun, exciting ideas to get the creative juices flowing, keep the process exciting and bring liveliness to into any style of painting. If you want to explore exciting ways to treat negative space, and have an interest in watercolor or other water media, this is definitely the book for you.
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85 of 90 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Painting negative space does positive things for your art, April 26, 2004
Linda Kemp's work is luminous and seems to float off the pages. She recommends EVERYONE to use the technique of painting negative space to improve their art. Negative painting is going AROUND the outline of a subject, the way you might lay down a leaf on a white sheet of paper. Then dab paint around it. Lift off that leaf and you have a white leaf floating on a colored ground. The book has the following chapters: Basic Painting Supplies Underpaintings - laying the groundwork Getting into Shapes - become aware of negative shapes! Working with Glazes and Building Layers Building Nature's Complex Shapes Picture Planning Made Easy Assembling the Pieces of the Puzzle The author says this technique applies to all media (certainly those who do charcoal or pastel are well aware of the importance of negative space, as are sculptors.) As a watercolorist, if you concentrate on line and wash, this will be quite revealing. In fact, this is probably a "must-have" on the technique bookshelf.
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92 of 104 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
No Good, December 27, 2004
I don't know who wrote the other reviews on this book, but I paint and draw and I have purchased a lot of books on art instruction, and this is one of the worst I have ever seen. I sent the book back to Amazon because it was so bad. I have only sent one other book back to Amazon and that includes over a hundred I have purchased over the years. This book offers nothing to the artist. The book is a presentation of the artist's work and not much more. All the glowing reports of teaching you how to paint negative space are fine, but that is about all the book shows the student. And you can learn a lot more about negative space in Drawing On The Right Side of the Brain and Keys to Drawing than you can learn here. If you want to look at paintings by this artist (Linda Kemp) go ahead and buy the book, but if you are looking for art instruction look elsewhere.
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