Painting Flowers in Watercolor with Charles Reid
by Charles Reid
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Book Summary Information
Author: Charles ReidEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-03-15
ISBN: 1581800274
Number of pages: 144
Publisher: North Light Books
Book Reviews of Painting Flowers in Watercolor with Charles Reid
Book Review: Question authority!
Summary: 5 Stars
Physically this is a typical how-to art book from North Light, Watson-Guptil, etc., here from North Light. It's about 11 by 9 inches and 144 pages. Index and table of contents included and plenty of good quality color reproductions.
But only physically is it a typical art how-to book. This not another art boiler like, "Painting Spring Grasses in Water-Soluble Oil Sticks". For one thing, the reproduced paintings are excellent, something rare in this genre. For another thing, albeit brilliantly successful, Reid is an eccentric watercolorist. He paints differently, often in contradiction to accepted practice, something he attributes (unconvincingly) to his formal training being only in oils. This difference is something to bear in mind if you want a book tutoring basic watercolor painting. Reid's version isn't the usual. Sure, he's a clean water, clean palette florals guy using bright fresh colors, but he's still very different painter.
A list of Reid's eccentricities is long. He doesn't ensure precise color placement control by working horizontally, rather he paints on a steeply tilted easel, resulting in many paint flow accidents. An aside; my sister took a workshop from him and gave me a report. All the attendees were of course previously aware of Reid's signature paint droops, dribbles, etc. When (inevitably) someone asked him what was the purpose of his accidental runs, Reid slowly turned and quietly leveled a look, "What accidental runs?" This chancy, incompletely controlled approach accords with his practice of mixing colors almost entirely on the paper. Reid accepts, no, positively counts on the fortuitous accidents afforded by partnering with the rather unpredictable, the pure paint, the clean water and the virgin paper. For example, to get that green, sort of, put cerulean blue down next to and partially overlapping with cadmium lemon and obtain, mostly, that green, but with pleasing variegation and clear echoes of the original pure blue and pure yellow. Typically a lovely result. To my taste, allowing the materials to operate in a risky almost unpredictable way is the very best of watercolor painting.
Also, contrary to the common canon, Reid doesn't layer several transparent glazes, overlaying each until the proper mid-tones and darks are achieved, analogous to the way Hollywood superimposed clear cartoon celluloids until Mickey emerged in the desired scene. Instead, much like Sargent learned and practiced, Reid says strike the final darks and mid-tones at the very start, before attending to the lightest, with the fewest further washes. Painting a premier coup. Of course, in watercolor the whites are conserved from the start as just the paper, and Reid is a master of incorporating white. Turn a Reid painting upside down and you will be astonished to see that it can seem almost entirely white paper.
Another unusual attribute of Reid's method is his relatively large palette or range of colors. In just a smallish tourist palette, mind you, he loads up to twenty colors, not the half dozen or less commonly recommended. Yes, a smaller palette does make color harmony more likely. And, most of us deplore the inept use of too many hues, resulting in a painting like a collision of a truck carrying tropical sherbets with a pizza delivery van. But, Reid carries it off, no doubt via judicious use of only a sizable fraction of his wide palette. It's evident that Reid likes paint and I like that in an artist.
Before leaving the subject of Reid's iconoclastic, challenge-those-laws approach, I must mention that it is really key to understanding his work. This book is stuffed with successful, mostly beautiful violations of the usual rules, far too many "infractions" to mention in a brief review. Keep an eye out for them and note how well they work. For example, why limit yourself to one focal point; Reid often has three or even four and to wonderful effect. These rebellions bring smiles to your face and more importantly, offer more energy and freedom to your own work. Reid's work seems to echo the "Question Authority!" bumper stickers of his youth.
In contrast to many, Reid's book makes a strong effort to provide much instruction and opportunity for exercise. Like most he begins with condensed advice on materials (paper, brushes, colors, etc.) and how to use them (wetting paper, holding a brush properly, mixing colors, and more). However, this book then progresses thru a long succession of increasingly challenging and beautifully illustrated step-by-step exercises, from a simple duck decoy to complicated floral still life. Tips and advice sub-sections and asides are sprinkled generously thru the text. Amusing, but profoundly true, among the many tidbits is, "...Never be bound by rules. No good painter follows rules..." Reid's teaching is a pastiche of many such apparent contradictions and this book is the more instructive and entertaining for it.
I recommend the book without reservation, unless you demand a book that will make you a watercolorist. In the real world you won't find that book; you can't learn to paint by sitting down with one book any more than you can learn the piano that way. I recall the aphorism, "It takes 100 paintings to make a watercolorist." Maybe it should be, one thousand. However, if you attentively read Reid's text, aggressively analyze the illustrations of his work and faithfully do all the hands-on exercises, then you surely will have made much good progress.
Summary of Painting Flowers in Watercolor with Charles Reid
Charles Reid is one of watercolor's best-loved teachers, a master painter whose signature style captures bright floral still-lifes with a loose spontaneity that adds immeasurably to the whole composition.Portraying the glory of nature in a highly individual way is the ultimate challenge for all painters, and with this book, Charles Reid shares with you the instruction and advice you need to paint fruits, vegetables and flowers that glow.
Special "assignments" and step-by-step demonstrations help you master techniques for superior brushwork, edge control, and composition. You'll learn to paint wild daffodils, roses, mums, sunflowers, lilacs, tomatoes, avocados, oranges, strawberries, jars, coffeepots, wine bottles and more.
Reid also shows you how to paint flowers in any environment, from the tranquility of a warm kitchen to a windswept beach in Bermuda. You'll create a garden of floral glories--compositions that burst with light, color and realism.
Best of all, as your proficiency for capturing the essence of flowers builds, so too will your personal style. Soon your paintings will depict the beauty of nature in your own individual fashion.
Let Charles Reid show you how to create beautiful watercolor florals from start to finish!
Award-winning artist Charles Reid wants his students to concentrate on three basic themes in his book Painting Flowers in Watercolor: "Keep it small. Keep it simple. Avoid overwashes." Economy is stressed throughout, as when Reid writes, "The fewer the strokes and the smaller the amount of color mixing, the fresher the painting." He explains how to get started with brushes, mixing paint, and the basics of composition and contour drawing, and provides exercises in these fundamentals. Reid then guides the watercolorist in painting fruit, vegetables, leaves, and flowers. He offers mini-demonstrations here, such as how to paint a bunch of carrots, an avocado, or slender leaf forms, and finishes with advanced, step-by-step demonstrations in composing still lifes with flowers. Experienced and beginning watercolorists will appreciate the wisdom in Reid's philosophy of "less is better." Somehow he manages to invest a bowl of yellow tulips and mixed flowers with a splashy, vibrant expressionism while expertly exploiting the blurry and translucent delicacy of the medium itself. --Mary Ribesky
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