Scattered seeds

The Watercolorist's Essential Notebook: A treasury of watercolor tricks and techniques discovered through years of painting and experimentation by Gordon MacKenzie
_{145 pages, full color}
My rating: 5/5

It is difficult to conceive of a more exhaustive book for this medium. In an attractive and abundantly illustrated format, MacKenzie lays out everything he knows and has discovered about the medium. Part 1 elaborates on the tools of the trade, their characteristics, how to choose them and care for them: the colors themselves (extremely enlightening as to which pigments to use for what), brushes paper, palettes (and how to make one), palette knives, sponges and masking materials. Part 2 discusses painting techniques using diverse tools, the laws of paint/water interaction, washes and glazes, masking... Part 3, which alone takes up half the book, focuses on composition with great tips, a few walkthroughs and how to save a piece (if possible at all) when we messed up! This is only a brief overview of the contents. The book is just crammed with substantial info and tips.

By the time I bought this book, I had been using watercolors for a few years but without any formal education, which was limiting. The book helped fill the gaps and inspire new ways of working. The intermediate price is in my opinion a bargain considering you won't need another book on the subject, just personal practice. I believe beginners will greatly benefit from it, and seasoned watercolorists may also find it a valuable reference to keep at hand.



The Human Figure in Motion and Animals in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge
_{Respectively 390 and 340 pages of plates (black and white photography), various editions available}
My rating: 4/5 stars

Muybridge's work has been called "one of the great monuments of 19th century photography" and almost everybody has seen bits of it even if they're not aware of the author. The sequential photos in these two volumes illustrate dozens of types of actions from different angles, making them, still today, an industry reference for artists, animators, art directors, etc.

The Human Figure presents subjects in the nude, so that muscles are visible. They are male, female, elderly, babies, performing 163 types of action shot from front, rear and three-quarter. Cycles (walk, run...) are presented in full.

Animals in Motion particularly focuses on the horse (and doesn't just show but also explains the different gaits) but also has plates for 32 other creatures, among which dogs, the elephant, small and big cats, the sloth, kangaroo, eagle and ostrich!

When I worked in an animation department, both books were prominent on our reference bookshelf, and I later purchased Animals in Motion for myself: as an illustrator it is still priceless to me. Human references are easy to find online if necessary (as long as I don't need a motion sequence), but it is harder to find exactly the position you need for an animal, so the book spares me much fruitless searching. The lighting in the pictures also really helps me with shading when I'm not bound to a different source of light.

A drawback of both books is that the photography being so old is not always very clear: it can be hard to make out the muscle lines or, at odd angles, the exact contours. There are also no plunging or upwards shots: all photos have a level perspective. This means a certain proficiency with drawing bodies in space is useful to fill these gaps, and beginners may find it frustrating at times. Just remember this is not a book to teach you to draw, but a reference book. Horse artists in particular will find it indispensable.




Problem Solved: A primer in design and communication by Michael Johnson
_{280 pages, full color}
My rating: 5/5

Design books abound, many of them promising to teach you the secrets of typography or layout, most just being catalogues of good design. I rarely come across a book I could recommend as truly useful to someone interested in the field but unable to study it. Of those, this is the first on my list, not just for excellency but also because it starts at the beginning: how to think like a designer. Finally a book that tackles design as professional problem-solving, and not just providing recipes for dazzling graphics.

The approach to the subject is both enticing and instructive. The author has identified 18 design "problems" that nearly all client briefs fall into. For instance, The Message Is The Price Problem (working on a tight budget), The Evolve or Revolve Problem (corporations changing their identity) etc. Each chapter deals with one problem, dissecting it and showing how different designers have solved this problem, and what made their solution stand out. Every product or ad mentioned is pictured, so there is no abstract bla-bla, only insights into a large number of the most successful designs of the past few decades. The text is airy and reads effortlessly. The examples shown range from packages to TV commercials and span the 60's to 2001: an unspoken statement that style goes in and out of fashion, but the conceptualisation process, the "designer thinking", does not age.

Being a graphic designer by training, I found Problem Solved to be an engrossing read faithful to the high design principles we studied, as opposed to the strictly commercial and undemanding design we usually have to deal with in practice. I'm also very glad to have it, though, when I'm suffering designer's block, as all I need to do is identify the problem and look up how other people dealt with it, emulating their thought process as opposed to imitating the final product...



Japanese Comickers:Draw Anime and Manga Like Japan's Hottest Artists
_{125 pages, full color}

My rating: 4/5

Warning: Contrary to what the title suggests, this book will not teach you how to draw manga. What it is is a compilation of walkthroughs: 14 Japanese illustrators show you how they complete a piece in their own distinctive style, from start to finish. The process is often elliptic and they don't always explain why they do something, so unless you're proficient with the software or medium used, you may feel left behind in places. That clarified, this is a book I treasure. All 14 artists have very different styles and that alone inspires you to try new things. You do pick up useful tricks from the walkthroughs. Not all of them work digitally. And the book is eyecandy in any case. Perhaps a bit expensive for its size, compared to the other books featured, and with so many talented deviants posting walkthroughs on the site it may be a redundant thing to own, but for myself I'm as excited and inspired by it as when I bought it (and still feel desperate to measure up to these guys!)

Labels: book reviews