Seascape Artist

(Written 10/29/07)

Watercolour Trees by Terry Harrison – ISBN # 1-84448-050-X

Trees are one of my favorite subjects to paint in the entire world. They have so much character, variety and down-to-earth roots while their branches blow (and bend) freely in the wind – whether it be a light summer breeze barely stirring the leaves or a full gale northerner shaking & shivering the forest with it’s gusto.

It is always nice to find another tree enthusiast – painter or not a painter – tree people are generally really terrifically nice people … I found this book at the local Hobby Lobby store and could not resist getting it for my art library. One reason I keep buying art books is that whenever I teach art classes or have art workshops, my books tend to leave with a student who needs it as a reference or inspiration to grow more in finding themselves as an artist or just to be inspired to get back to creating their art.

I read the book and I enjoyed it very much. He has some great ideas and tips for painting trees … though I am not sure that I agree about tree trunks needing to be shades of green … all the trees I’ve been intimately acquainted with in Iowa and Texas have had brown bark and limbs for the most part except for specialty trees like birches – my artistic license is to add oranges, blues and any other color that strikes my fancy at the moment whether it be browns based or not – today I was adding blue & orange and black to my brown watercolor pencil tree trunk while drawing & painting at lunch. And he really puts a credit card to good usage as a painting tool … LOL … I don’t think it would work well for me with my vision problems – a light touch usually works better than too heavy handed or not even on the paper as I tend to be since I have no depth perception and cannot tell where I am in relation to the paper until after it is too late to change it – watercolors are not nearly as forgiving as oils for vision caused happy accidents.

You can tell by the spelling of watercolor that he is English – they spell it watercolour while we in the US spell it as watercolor. Spelling aside, he had good tips & tricks and very easy to read & understand for beginners but just as useful & interesting for intermediate to advanced or expert painters as well – I particularly like how he goes into detail about using masking fluid and how easy it is to color it to make it easier to see on white paper – he said it in an easy to understand and replicate manner which is something I really appreciate. He did not assume that I already knew what he was talking about (I didn’t since I don’t use masking fluid) but it did not come across as talking down to me either – informational and interesting was how all of the book came across to me. I enjoyed his writing and the demonstrations were very good.

Hope you enjoy the book. Paint lots of trees! Each one will teach you something new about trees, yourself and painting.

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