Artist’s Complete Problem Solver by Trudy Friend
(Mine is a 2nd hand copy off Ebay at less than half it’s original price and it came in an almost mint condition! How cool is that??:))
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 (maybe cos I’m a teacher myself, and used to teacher-talk:P)
Anyway, I appreciate the passion that Trudy Friend has for the watercolor medium and how generous it is of her to share her trade secrets with apiring beginners like me! 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:
Man… I have such a longgg lonnnnnngggg way to go!!!
If there’s anything I dislike painting, it’s a flower with billions of identical petals…
…but look how a single Chrysanthemum is made to look so beautiful here!
I thought this was fine…
…till I looked at this.
My work usually looks something like this:
Which I thought looks quite okay. But compared to the next piece, it is indeed, quite, quite dead.
I liked how Trudy broke each problematic piece down to such simple, easy to understand solutions. It seemed possible that a beginner like me could learn to do something like this with some hard work and practice!
So I drew a snail today. To show how I’m trying to improve slowly(but surely, I hope!)
Before. Without reading the book.
After
Haha ok I’m exaggerating. The first snail was a fast one minute 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?:)
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