Painting With Your Artists Brain

Rating:
Summary: One of the Best!
Review: Besides being an excellent overview of watercolor techniques helpful to the experienced as well as the novice, this book provides valuable guidance for enhacing the "seeing" skills we need for being better artists, no matter what medium is used. Purcell's book is among my favorites and I refer to it frequently.

Rating:
Summary: Now What I Thought It Would Be.....
Review: I was hoping this book would be similar to the book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". Although it is attempting to show you basically the same principle, in my opinion, it failed miserably. The first 30 pages of the book are devoted to watercolor techniques. The samples and exercises were few. At one point he asks you to draw the dark shapes and "when you do so, you should notice one very big problem with it", but never refers back to that to tell me if I was seeing it correctly. The book was an interesting read (hence the 3 stars), but as a learning tool I found it profoundly lacking and definately not worth the money.

Rating:
Summary: A book on how to see.
Review: This book is very effective in teaching the artist or beginner to see in the language of art, which is shape, color and edge. The medium used in the book is watercolor. The approach to technique is simplified to the essentials to get going in water color, but any medium would apply. I enjoyed the simple approach. The author was a teacher and I'm sure a good one at that. The book wasn't bogged down with unnecessary "how to" stuff. Each chapter covers another aespect of seeing with very understandable text and examples. I found this book to be a good example of how to transulate all that stuff out there into the language of art. If that is what you want to do I recommend it. If on the other hand you wish to spend you time at the art supply store trying all the hundreds of supplies and techniques and not seeing and painting than this book is not for you.
For me the only week part of the book was the last two chapters, but then I've been painting for 25 years.

Rating:
Summary: WASTE OF MONEY - get Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Review: This is a poor knock-off of the classic book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards. Save your money and go back to the original! And if you are a painter, try the new book she has written, called, simply, COLOR. It's fabulous