(‘Re-discovery’ because this is Re-posted from my super old blog and I picked up the book recently again…:)) Blog re-post:
I liked this book so much that I ended up buying it after borrowing it from the library.:)
(Mine is a 2nd hand copy off Ebay at less than half it’s original price. What a steal!:)) While some reviewers have felt that they didn’t like being taught exactly what was wrong with their work and how to correct it, I really liked this detailed approach.
Anyway, I appreciate the passion that Trudy Friend has for the watercolor medium and how generous it is of her to share her expertise. Many pages in the book come in a ‘Problems-Solutions’ format:
When I first skimmed the pages of the book, I looked at this…
…and thought, ‘oh, that’s nice!’, before realising that the above was actually a problematic piece!? I should actually be aiming for this:
Wowww… so lovely. 😍😍😍I thought the first flower was pretty good…
…but look how the second Chrysanthemum is made to look so vivid and gorgeous here! I thought this was okay…
…till I looked at this.
And how about this squirrel:
Which I thought looked quite decent, proportions and all but next to the next piece, it is suddenly looked pretty flat…!
I liked how Trudy broke each problematic piece down to such simple, easy to understand solutions. It seemed suddenly exciting and possible that I (yes, noob me!!) could learn to do something like this with some hard work and practice! So I drew/painted a snail today. Here goes… Before. Without reading the book.
Struggling…
After
Wave of magic wand *~-~-*~-~-*~-~-* Tadah…!
Haha ok I’m exaggerating. The first snail was a few-seconds scribble. The second took me an hour! It’s not as detailed as I would like but I tried to incorporate a few new things I learnt from the book. What do you think?:)