Books Reviews

Mountains and Moorlands in Colour – Book Review

By Angela Youngman Feb 7, 2011, 16:32 GMT

Capturing a range of peaks and valleys from the Western world to the Far East, this collection of paintings is culled from the well-travelled portfolio of a renowned instructor. For beginning watercolorists with confident drawing skills and intermediate painters seeking inspiration and style suggestions, this study offers an in-depth examination of landscape elements, such as rock, snow, low vegetation, perspective, and distance. From the epic heights of glacier covered ranges, ...more

A well known watercolorist, David Bellamy looks at how to paint a very specialist subject - mountains and moorlands. 

The step by step instructions are accompanied by lots of fascinating (and extremely useful) hints, for example the best mix of colors to suggest depth in a landscape, where to place the colors in a receding landscape, where to find subjects, using trees as a framework. 

He looks at the value of taking photographs as well as other methods - photographs of musk oxen in Greenland proved useless but sketches done through binoculars mounted on a tripod saved the day. 

Even sketching in bad weather offers unexpected opportunities since it can create a 'strong sense of mood' and rain 'can often add a sense of spontaneity'.  Bellamy points out that it can be useful drawing into wet washes with a dark watercolor pencil when the sketchbook is being spattered with rain.

This is a book which makes you think slightly outside the box, viewing watercolor painting in a different way.  It offers answers to problems faced by many artists when trying to sketch outside or to capture elusive landscape details.

A perfect gift for any artist.