Customer Reviews

Watercolorist's A to Z of Trees and Foliage

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent book for watercolorists interested in learning the difficult art of painting one of the most difficult and yet common subjects.
Starting with colors and methods Adelene Fletcher goes on to describe in some detail how to paint a variety of common and not so common trees. The joy too is in the little paintings on some of the pages which illustrate the leaves, fruit or whatever, just thrown in for fun!
If you are interested in painting in watercolors - you should buy this book - you will learn a great deal whatever your level of skill is.

This is a BEAUTIFUL book by Adelene Fletcher, who also wrote her A to Z book on painting flowers in watercolor. Both of these books are tops on my list of great watercolor books to learn painting from.

This book begins with the materials and pallet she uses, then she teaches you the techniques you will use in the rest of the book, such as washes, brushwork, various wet in wet methods such as water-spotting, crisp defined shapes, crisp edges, glazing, creating soft blends, various wet on dry methods such as softening with a tissue, softening with a sponge,,various texturing methods such as spattering, granulation, sponging, wax resist, feathering , Other techniques taught are reserving and reclaiming whites and the various ways this is done, and negative painting, using body color to define the lighter shapes, and highlighting.

The teaching of the techniques Fletcher uses are followed by a two page spread of the 26 trees that she will teach you to paint in this book Each tree lesson is given in a fully detailed step-by-step sequence with color close ups of each step, Also given are close ups of the branch structure without leaves, and the leave appearance and coloration of that particular tree along with it's seed shape and coloration. Each tree lesson gives the pallet used for that exercise. The end each tree lesson has two pages of a painting of that tree in close up view in a nature scene, allowing you to have a good idea of what the final painting should like with it's trunk structure and texture, branch structure and leaves.

This is an excellent book for watercolorists at all levels. Beginners will benefit greatly from its easy to follow lessons on the various techniques used. The step-by-step instructions are easy to follow and are based on the lessons she gives you in the beginning techniques section, where she demonstrates how these are used in particular to paint trees and their various parts. The paintings of the various trees are beautiful, and the instructions with close-ups of the detailed steps are well written and easy to follow.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning watercolor techniques and also, for the mores advanced student on learning more detail about specific trees and their structure and textures. It is also a beautiful book to enjoy for the paintings alone. GREAT BOOK!!"

I found this artist to be very excellent. She not only showed a wide variety of trees, but had excellent technigue, and wonderfully detail instructions and demonstrations.

The A to Z of Trees is a very helpful book to a new painter,Yes I know they grow out side and you can see them easly, but they have now mostly lost their leaves.
with this book I can paint trees in my warm room and know they will look something like right. many thank