How to Paint: Flowers in Acrylics: (How to Paint)

Tim Fisher makes the most of the superbly versatile qualities of acrylics and demonstrates his own innovative and inspiring techniques for painting a gorgeous selection of popular flowers. The reader learns how to select the right paints and the best brushes for the great range of techniques, including negative painting, masking, washes, impasto methods, texturing and much more. There are richly illustrated sections on using colour and sketching and planning paintings, and many handy tips throughout. A fantastic book for artists of all skill levels who want to create atmosphere, experiment with colour and paint accomplished, beautiful paintings.

Table of Contents:
• Contains three comprehensive step-by-step demonstrations • Help with paints, brushes and other materials • Beautiful, clear photography

About the Author :
Tim Fisher was born in Leicestershire and has had a life long interest in art. He is well known for his love of colour and experimentation and works in a wide range of mediums. Many of his painting have been produced as fine art prints and cards. Tim is a regular contributor to the Leisure Painter magazine. He also runs workshops and painting holidays as well as demonstrating to art groups throughout the UK.

Review :
This series of introductory booklets has been throwing up some surprises of late and is in a little danger of suffering an identity crisis. The implication of the head title is that it's aimed at the beginner, but recent additions have tended to be a little more advanced, while at the same time keeping the spirit of the simple approach. I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily, but there might be some confusion over who the target audience is and it could be in danger of being overlooked by the casual browser. Tim Fisher paints in the oil style of the medium, frequently in quite a heavy impasto, a fact that's worth knowing if that's not your thing. The meat of the book is a series of three demonstrations, of increasing complexity, that showcase nicely what you can achieve, but this is only half of it. The rest comprises an introduction to materials that the more experienced will want to skip and some quite useful notes on tone, colour and colour mixing. There's also a solid section on getting started which includes notes on sketching and composition. All this is quite basic and, although the demonstrations are simply explained and comprehensively illustrated you can't help feeling they're quite a long way beyond the scope of anyone reading the book's first half. It's not that everything here isn't massively useful, I'm just not sure that it's useful to the same set of people. On the other hand, if you want to learn to paint flowers in acrylics (and a subject-based book in the medium is to be welcomed), this is for you.-Artbookreview.net With most books on acrylics concentrating on technique, a subject-based one is to be welcomed. Tim Fisher's work, which is mostly based on the impasto method of application, may be of interest to more advanced readers. There is quite a lot of basic instruction and a short section on materials and supports. The section on tone, colour and mixing is well worth a look as it is nicely succinct. The three demonstrations, covering wild roses, black-eyed Susans and a field of poppies, are most likely to be of interest and are where you can see the author's techniques displayed to advantage. While there remains room for a more comprehensive book on the subject, this one is a good one to be going on with.-The Artist Flowers have always been a popular subject for painting, and here is a book on how to paint them using acrylics. It is also a book about acrylics and how to get the best out of them; in fact this author ought to write another book concentrating just on this as he does it so well. After closing the book this was what stayed in my mind rather than the floral paintings, good as they are. A lot of how-to books tell you what to do for the best, but Mr Fisher explains not only why it is a good idea but also why doing something else is a bad idea. Here is information on the true difference between artists' and students' quality paints, on how to use a painting knife and clean your paintbrush properly. As well as the color wheel there is also much discussion and illustration concerning tone and how to use colors to their best advantage. There is even advice on mixing paint and how it differs with a brush and a knife - I am impressed as this is surely the type of detail that every beginner (and improver) wants to know. There are exercises on composition and examples of what not to do, and although there are only three staged examples to work through Mr Fisher makes the most of them. Before you even begin there is a list of what you learn in each and then the same Search Press format you expect by now of many illustrated stages with captions. I confess to being impressed and hope that this talented writer as well as artist goes on to write more of his highly informative books.-Myshelf.com The bright, durable pigments present in acrylic paints have become the one of the most flexible and versatile types of paint available to the modern artist. It can be used like oils, watercolours or even impasto. This makes it particularly ideal when painting flowers, creating an almost three dimensional quality. In this 'how to' book, Tim Fisher explains clearly which techniques to use when capturing the richness and delicate quality of flowers. From Black Eyed Susans to Hydrangas, poppies and wild roses; the range of flowers covered is quite wide. There are clear step by step photographs showing how to develop the paintings of each type of flower. Advice is given on composition and dealing with unexpected problems - he even shows mistakes that he himself made, and how they were overcome. A good solid introduction to the subject.-Monstersandcritics.com At 64 pages, this is a compact guide and the length means that there's no space to fuss and rummage, which is perhaps the series' greatest strength. After a very basic introduction that includes some useful advice on choosing and mixing colours, the main meat of the book is a series of just three demonstrations of increasing complexity that will flex your creative muscles in this rewarding and forgiving medium. Tim paints mostly in an impasto style, so this is a book that will appeal to those who prefer oil to the watercolour way of working and, while it'll leave you wanting more, it answers a lot of questions that you'll have. There's also tie-in DVD from Teaching Art, so you can watch Tim in action.-Paint