Brilliant new art book

I have just recently joined a book club that caters for artists. It's called Painting for Pleasure and is run by Reader's Union. My latest order arrived yesterday and one of the books I ordered is 'realism in watermedia' by Christopher Leeper. I find it hard to find art books that give instruction on how to paint in a realistic style. A lot of books out there give lots of advice on techniques but a lot of the artwork in the examples is very abstract, and I find it hard to adapt these techniques to produce realistic artwork. I've been looking for books that have step by step demos but also explains how the reader can acheive results in their own work. This book is one of them. It is written in a really nice, clear way and the text is accompanied by lots of photographs.

It has 7 chapters, and covers watercolour, acrylic and mixed media:

• basic materials
• plan values for impact
• painting from life
• painting from photographs
• watermedia techniques
• mixed media techniques
• step-by-step demonstrations

I very rarely read an art book and feel inspired to tackle some painting but this book has given some good advice and inspired me to have a go, so I will be good and work on my commissions tommorow, but I think I may tackle a painting at the weekend.

Siamese cat in Acrylic finished

I have finally completed my Siamese cat Acrylic painting today. As you know it was my first ever Acrylic painting. I learned the hard way about mixing enough of a colour - I had to do a second layer of the cream as I wanted to cover up some detail I was unhappy with but hadn't mixed enough so the second layer is too dark. I found the detail very hard to do, I just can't control a paint brush like I can a pencil. I was using a smaller brush than reccomended, but still couldn't get fine enough lines. I have posted the finished peice on the Pet Portraits forum I am a member of for some constructive criticism so I will let you know what comments I get from there. Here is stage 3 and then the final painting: