Saturday 31 July 2010

David Curtis - Light and mood in watercolour

This video complements David Curtis's book Light and Mood in Watercolour on the same topic which is where I personally first started when finding out more about how he worked.  I'd seen his paintings before and was delighted in 2005 to find a book which explained his approach.

It's also one of the more intelligent books written on this topic and is very definitely NOT one of the "dumbed down" books which get published all too often these days.  It's very much a book for artists who enjoy reading!

What i like about it is that it hasn't been written in a formulaic style.  It's more like a narrative interspersed with appropriate headlines and images.  I guess it's a bit like listening to a tutor talking about how they approach a topic and telling you what they're doing as they do it.

So for example he talks about "Developing Ideas" and within that discusses sketching, tone and colour - rather than having specific chapters dedicated to 'Colour".  It takes a bit longer to read and is less easy to scan - but actually it's a more satisfying read at the end of the day.

I particularly enjoyed the fact that there is more text - and absolutely no step by step diagrams - than many provide on the different watercolour techniques he uses.  I'll do a more detailed review on Making A Mark reviews but I hope the above and the video below give you a sense of what he is about and how he approaches making his art.

This video gives you a sense of the different type of landscapes he paints in watercolour and how he tackles them in different contexts.

Here's the blurb from APV films about what the video is about
Painting outdoors in all weather conditions is very important to David. Working in pure watercolour in a loose and immediate way he is able to capture the light and mood of a place. Here he chooses to paint the pastural scenery of his native Yorkshire in the early spring as well as the city streets of London and Paris. He also works in his studio, painting a more considered watercolour using an oil painting as source material.


Books and DVDs by David Curtis

You can find a new section dedicated to David Curtis in my "resources for artists" website The Best Books about Landscape Painting  

Below you can find my Amazon Associate links to David Curtis's books - I don't usually do this like this but I do rate this artist very highly.

United Kingdom
United States of America
Posted by Making A Mark at 10:40
Labels: , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)