Watercolour Fruit and Vegetable Portraits

Starting with basic techniques and use of colour, she shows how to capture the individuality of spiralling artichokes, the smooth contours of aubergines, the sumptuous reds of glossy peppers, the cool yellows of bananas, the subtle hues of blossom and more. Using traditional methods, overlaying washes, dry brush techniques, glazing, masking - she develops pictures that are exciting and different, sometimes with an unconventional and amusing twist that takes the images on to new, contemporary levels. Explanations on drawing, composition, lighting, painting white subjects are included, along with many different ideas and dozens of useful and helpful tips. The author is a well-known and well-respected watercolour artist. This title provides detailed techniques sections and step-by-step projects. It is highly illustrated.

This might seem quite a niche title, but in fact dedicating a book solely to techniques for painting a type of food is a brilliant source of information and advice. Traditional methods, as well as unconventional ideas, cater for beginners to more experienced artists. The tips garnered here are sure to extend past the fruit bowl or vegetable patch. Anyone in doubt as to the results possible need only look at any of Showell's exceptionally detailed and inspirational works which feature on every page.-Artist's & Illustrators Books about painting flowers and trees are everywhere, but fruit and vegetables? Surely they belong in the garden or the kitchen - A look into this lovely book will reveal otherwise, and show the rose in every cabbage. Paintings reminiscent of early 19th century botanicals rub shoulders with the more playful, modern studies and will surely make you see fruit and veg in a new light. Last year I reviewed this author's Watercolour Flower Portraits (look in the site archives) and was impressed but it is easy to make flowers look good. Now Ms Showell shows you how to get the most out of a wide range of fruit and vegetables. The paintings leap off the pale backgrounds and manage to look luscious and juicy, show off their interesting shapes and often their accompanying flowers. Of course there is the usual shopping list of what you need together with some hints as to how to use some ordinary objects for art, as well as composition, working from photographs and keeping a sketchbook. I like the color mixing section that instead of blobs shows appropriately colored vegetables (yellow bananas for example) and the playful compositions that make "still life" seem more lively and less still. There are lots of examples to work though showing how to make lemons look knobbly and aubergines too shiny to name two examples, as well as longer studies to copy with staged photographs. I particularly liked the section on painting white vegetables on white paper and making them stand out, and overall I thought that you can learn a lot of "tricks of the trade" from this book that you can apply to many other types of painting. This is an impressive primer, and suitable for a wide range of abilities.-Myshelf.com On the face of it, this seems a pretty unlikely idea for a book. I mean, I can see the attraction of flower portraits, obviously, but the ingredients for soup? On the other hand, when you see the really rather beautiful results that Billy gets, it's ten to one you're going to want to have a go yourself. However, if it wasn't done as well as it is here, I still contend that you'd lower your gaze and hurry on by. But no matter. The greengrocer's stock in trade provides a wealth of colour and texture and something you, as an artist, can really get your teeth in to (yes, yes, I know, but you should see the jokes that got edited out!) and there are some really serious exercises in watercolour virtuosity here. Clearly, this is not a book aimed at the beginner and all of the introductory material is written for the experienced artist who just needs a little guidance in what's required for this specific subject matter - there's none of the elementary how-to-paint stuff that plagues so many books. It's nice to be treated as a grown-up for once and this is undoubtedly going to make you well-disposed towards the author before you even get started and that can't be a bad thing. After that, it's straight into the subject matter with a nicely varied chapter on drawing a wide range of different shaped vegetables and fruit. From here. it's on to composition though, as this is a book of portraits (that is to say, the bare subject without any real context) this tends toward some sometimes slightly bizarre arrangements, the value of which I'm not totally sure of. However, this is a bit of a quibble, because the next chapter is about colour and this is really valuable as it deals with shades you may well not have encountered before and Bil

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