For some years now I have tried my hand at botanical painting so I was interested in Trudy Friend's book about drawing and painting flowers: problems and solutions. Though I immediately was aware that Trudy's style is not the detailed, realist, botanical style that I have been following. Her technique is altogether faster and freer though many of the problems she points out with flower painting also apply to more detailed work....especially at the drawing stage. She details a very wide range of media...including pencil, water soluble pencil, watercolour, inks, and so on. This did indicate to me the possibility of using more combinations of techniques than I have been used to. Normally I have just worked with a pencil outline and then with pure watercolour.
Trudy certainly draws attention to the importance of contrast in the finished work and the importance of "cutting-in" with a dark tone behind a lighter tone to bring the lighter tone forwards. I was aware of this but she certainly "highlights" it. She is also a great advocate of leaving a thin while line between the darker tone and the lighter tone. There are a number of other tricks that I found interesting; the importance of small, quite dark, negative shapes in defining form; either painting small flowers first and then filling in with vegetative effects around this colour centres or doing the reverse and leaving white space for the flowers and painting these in last...though in each case..leaving a small white border between flower and background and/or cutting in with darker tones for the vegetation. Somewhere I read that drawing...or painting for that matter is really about painting the shadows....objects normally don't have nice outlines around them and almost unconsciously this book is emphasising this process. Highlights are really just the white background of the paper. Trudy also shows how ...even when you are just suggesting shapes etc...you need to get the anatomy of your drawing right and the strokes following the contours. All in all, quite a useful book. Not great in terms of learning about watercolour per se or about a pallet of colours but some seriously good advice about drawing flowers and especially emphasising the importance of shadow and light in bringing out form. ( )