I acquired this book in Japan at a museum devoted to the work of Brian Wildsmith. It's mainly in Japanese and therefore the text is more or less inaccessible to me (my wife gets frustrated doing the translations). But what a wonderful work. It's interesting that Wildsmith hasn't appeared to get the accolades that I would have expected for his work in the UK, where he trained and spent his early years. I wonder if this is due to the fact that he effectively re-located to France and basically brought up his family in France. Did the British public/establishment then regard him as "French", or at least non-British? Who knows. But it was up to the Japanese to give him the attention that his work warrants. A museum was established on the Izu Peninsular....relatively close to where my in-laws live and I was fortunate enough to be able to visit it ...and buy this book there. My father-in-law knew the owner, I believe......maybe they were both Rotarians. However, I'm sad to say that when I went to re-visit the Museum I found it closed down....and, I think, it's been replaced by a coffee shop. And when I corresponded with Brian Wildsmith's daughter about it she mentioned that there had been some unsatisfactory negotiations about the stewardship of the art works. This book is a really good catalogue and overview of Brian Wildsmith's art work. Mainly focused on children's art books but what a kaleidoscope of colours and imagination. I just love it.

Unfortunately, I can't work out what techniques he uses. I guess most of it is mixed media because there are certainly some crayon in some of his pictures and some pen and ink work; but is there also watercolour, gouache? I think so but it's really hard to tell. Section 10 of this book is about his oil paintings and, as far as I can gather from the Japanese text, he moved into oils when he was secure enough to do so...apparently later in life. The oils, incidentally are magnificent. .....especially the series of Calendar animals. His daughter informed me that they have no videos of Brian at work ...and I would love to see his technique and approach. He doesn't seem to have documented it anywhere. The family have established a web site devoted to him and his work and there is some biographical material there ..but very little about his techniques.

I guess this book is not going to be widely available to English speakers which is a great pity. It means that to see Wildsmith's work, you have to go to the printed picture books...which seem (in some cases anyway) to have lost a bit of trueness to the original colours etc. And, recently, when I have gone looking for his work it seems to be out of print...so one is reduced to looking for second hand copies of the books.
As far as this book is concerned, it is a great overview of his work, the colours and quality of printing are great and I'm bitterly disappointed that the museum featuring his work has gone out of business. I hope some other museum might take up the works ....there are a few around the world devoted to Children's art (including the couple focused on Chihiro Iwasaki in Japan).
Bottom line for me is that this is an excellent overview of the work of Brian Wildsmith and I really treasure it. An easy five stars from me. ( )