I bought the book "Painting Acrylic Flowers A-Z" by Lexi Sundell a while back. The art looked excellent and the book was on special so I decided to buy it. Sometimes I'm disappointed with book purchases that I make online without seeing the book in person first, but this time I definitely was not!
The first section of the book covers materials and methods, so for 43 pages, she covers stuff like materials, simplified shapes of the flowers, composition, as well as beautifully photographed technique examples. One of her suggestions that she utilizes quite frequently is using a medium to create striations and then when the medium is dry letting the color be picked up by the striations. I haven't tried the technique, but it works extremely well for her.
Pages 46 to 125 have example flower paintings with detailed directions on how to paint them. Each flower generally has two pages dedicated to it with very specific instructions on which colors to mix. Each one has a special section devoted to explaining details that may be challenging and giving some advice as well as specific images pertinent to the example. The flower I scanned in is a Gazania, not one I was familiar with before, but the special detail section was interesting to me.
She shares 40 flowers in this section. Overall I was very pleased with this book, the information was presented clearly and well. I think the information could be applied to a range of skills level. I love to paint flowers and I enjoyed this book. I feel like it could be especially useful if I were feeling blocked with a flower, even if that specific flower was not included, I could look at a similar flower...
The images in the directory are tiny, but I'm including it to give you an idea of the specific flowers she covers. She also does a very detailed peony example in the introductory section.
I'm not in any way associated with the author, publisher, or selling venues of this book. I just read it recently and thought it was a solid addition to my reference section and decided to share it here.
I am linking this post with Inspire Me Monday
http://www.create-with-joy.com/
Sounds like a wonderful book! I am going to check it out!
ReplyDeleteThis book looks wonderful. Thanks for sharing your insights! Her flowers are gorgeous, aren't they?
ReplyDeleteThis book looks wonderful! I look forward to seeing your floral paintings with the inspiration from these images!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you enjoyed my thoughts on this book, it really is quite beautiful and also inspiring to me :).
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