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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
Good Pictures, Good Painting Tips, Few Useful Pastel Tips, 13 Aug 2003
This book is brimming with pictures to inspire you in your use of pastels, and a range of styles is seen in those pictures. Moreover there is a good level of discussion for the absolute novice on how to draw in general (persective, colour, tone, etc) . However, these topics are not specific to pastel, so if you already know how to draw with pencil and are branching out into pastel (as I am) then this book will be of limited use.The book is let down by a lack of tips and useful information specific to pastel (perhaps there isn't much to learn, just a lot to practice?), e.g. Why do I still see so much paper through my finished drawings? when and why should I lightly fix between layers? How do I erase/overdraw errors? Why can't I effectively represent tone through the use of hatching - are the pastels too soft, is my paper's tooth too coarse, or am I just incapable? For a beginner, what is the most cost effective inventory in which to invest? There are other niggles where discussion in the text could be clearly illustrated by pictures but is not (e.g. the suggestion that a black and white photocopy of a specific picture in the book would show it's tonal range - why not just print it in b+w too? Or the suggestion that it's good practice to copy large reproductions - so why not provide us with such reproductions in the book?) There are several "demo"s where you can see the various stages in a picture's creation, but I would have preferred a lot more of these "demo"s ideally showing a greater range of pastel technique.
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(1 customer review)
