GREAT BOOK FIND!

I was reading Peggy Stermer-Cox's blog the other day and she featured a fabulous blogsite called "Making a Mark" by Katherine Tyrrell, an English artist. Intrigued, I wandered over there and fell in a Rabbit Hole! Hours later, I was still wandering around her site going from link to link to link! She is full of valuable information and does tons of research. This was a real treasure trove from a very generous artist.

I came across a recommendation from her for a book on composition (shown above) If you click on the blog title it will take you directly to the Amazon page where you can order the book. I, of course, couldn't wait that long so I headed out to my local book store, bought the book and read it in an evening. I wanted to present the information the next day to the Critique group I am leading, since we will be focusing on composition for the coming month.

The brilliance of this book is its' simplicity. The author has distilled lots of information into easily understood, clearly illustrated concise, digestible chunks! I never realized how difficult it was to distill art information into a few paragraphs until I started working on my book. I think I must have passed this book up before because it looked too simple, but that is the true beauty of it.

Composition is critical to any successful painting and that means there has to be some planning and thought put into the design before the paint goes on. Especially in watercolor. It is always so tempting to jump right into putting paint on the paper or canvas. But, without a well structured composition as the foundation, there isn't enough paint in the world to disguise a poorly conceived painting. That old saw "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail" holds true.

I had a chance to visit the 2008 National Watercolor Society traveling exhibition at the Adobe Art Center in Castro Valley after the critique class. Now there is a fabulous collection of well composed and executed paintings. It's almost criminal what catalogues do to beautiful art work, so when ever possible, make the time to see excellent work in person. It motivates us to strive for higher excellence in our own work.