Stunning paintings and excellent instruction!, February 5, 2009

“I bought this book on the advice of an online friend, and I'm so glad I did!  
 
My favorite aspect of the book is that it contains LOTS of step-by-step demonstrations, and the pencil sketches for each demo are included, so I can enlarge them and paint along with Ann Pember. Admittedly, some of the sketches are quite faint and a bit difficult to see, but I've managed to work with them. Also, a few of the drawings are very detailed, so if you're more interested in learning the basics of a specific technique than you are in completing a whole painting, you may only want to reproduce a small section of the sketch instead of the whole piece. Every project (even the smallest,) includes a materials list, which I found quite helpful. It was nice to know what I'd need before I started a project, and there was no chance of getting halfway through a painting, only to find out that I was missing some crucial materials.  
 
I like it that Ms Pember starts us out with the basics, and progresses to more complex techniques. She teaches you how to mix and mingle colors, as well as different ways to add texture to your paintings. She also discusses the use of triads and limited palettes, and demonstrates lifting techniques and ways to vary your edges. Of course, she applies all of this information to flower painting, and she does a nice job of teaching how to paint the different parts of flowers. I particularly enjoyed the section on painting backgrounds, as those can be a real challenge for me!  
 
After Ms Pember teaches you the basic techniques, she presents five detailed "putting it all together" demonstrations of complete paintings, which I found to be extremely helpful. Many books teach the basics, but leave you hanging when it's time to combine the steps into a complete painting, while others gloss over the techniques and provide impressive-looking demonstrations of gorgeous paintings, that turn out to have crucial steps missing so there's no way for the reader to "paint along" with the artist. That's not the case here -- I was able to understand Ms Pember every step of the way.  
 
I highly recommend this book if you want to paint vibrant, colorful close-focus florals. My only warning is that you won't find large bouquets here, and there isn't a vase or lace tablecloth in sight, so if you're a more traditional flower painter, this may not be the book for you. (You could still learn a lot of fun techniques and could probably benefit from the information on color mixing and how to paint the details of a flower.”