Acylics Tips and Tricks, Book Review: Bad to Poor

Title: Acrylic Tips and Tricks

Cover Tagline: Getting the best results from acrylics – helping you to paint with confidence and style.

Publish Date: 2009

A small sized painting tips book published in the UK by Davis Cuthbert.  His personal art website doesn’t speak much about his writing career, nor does it show extensive gallery of his paintings.

I am rather at a loss on what to say as I certainly don’t want to offend him, but I couldn’t find very many example of paintings.  I suppose if I purchase a book specifically written about acrylic painting, I expect the author to be an experienced acrylic painter.  I would expect the author to have spent significant time in either the studio or the field, with the resulting artwork to show for it.

Perhaps that is an American perspective and they do things differently over in the UK.

A little Amazon.com research reveals that Mr. Cuthbert has authored several How-To painting books over the last couple of decades including:

• Acrylics, Artists’ Questions Answered, by David Cuthbert, 2004
• Oils, Artists’ Questions Answered, by David Cuthberth, 2004.
• Pastel Painter’s Solution Book: 50 Pastel Painting Problems and How to Solve Them, by David Cuthberth, 1996.
• Collins Pastel Painter’s Question and Answer Book, by David Cuthbert, 1996.

In looking over the book, Acrylic Tips and Tricks, Getting the best results from acrylics – helping you paint with confidence and style –my first impression was that this book is perhaps mis-titled as most of the tips and techniques are general painting tips suited equally well for both acrylic or oil painting.  Demos and examples are mostly traditional approaches.

Acrylic Glazing Technique?

The section of the book about Color Glazes makes no mention  of using acrylic glazing medium.  This seems to be one of THE most discussed topic on acrylic paint.  The use of acrylic glazing medium is so radically different from the slow drying traditional method of oil glazing that I was rather surprised that Cuthbert simply teaches to:

“dilute the orange to a thin consistency, and brush on the transparent color”.  – page 57.

As a working artist, I can tell you that adding glazing medium to orange acrylic paint for glazing techniques is HUGE.

The glow is exceptional and you can NOT achieve the same look by simply thinning your orange pigment with water.  This oversight is kinda of a biggie for me; I pretty much lost respect for the rest of the book after reading this specific section.

A significant portion of the book is used to discussing very basic concepts of not only painting, but sketching, color, compostion, etc.  After digging through this book, I think my main criticism of it is the the cover and subtitle promise more than the book actually delivers.

Clumsy Topics:

While the first few section move alon rather nicely, at the end things get a little strange.  There is a small section jammed into the back of the book hinting at figure painting, but only giving a few tips about painting lips, feet, toes,  with a few pages about animal fur thrown in for good measure.

The section about textures immediately caught my eye, but this section of the book only teaches  “faux” texture with color, shade, and tone instead of discussing gels, mediums, and glosses.

So much MORE is available to acrylic painters for texture today.  It seems all of the new acrylic techniques are completely missing from this book.

Cute little book for a Beginner’s Totebag:

Overall, it is fine little general beginning art instruction book.  It is well written and contains nice examples and demos.  With lots of color photos and a spiral binding, the small sized book will fit into a  tote bag rather nicely.

If you really want to learn to harness and exploit the power and wonder of acrylic paint, I would suggest skipping this book all together.  Anyone other than a beginner painter will likely be disappointed in the content, as most of it is a repeat of demos and information found in most all painting books.

Use of Lose?

Well I guess you can figure out by now, I am not really crazy about this book. I am choosing to lose this one; as my studio bookshelf just doesn’t have room for it.

Since the Amazon “look inside feature” allows you only a glance at the table of contents page, you can’t really get a good look at the actual content unless you buy or brows in person.

Here is an extended Table of Contents so you can see more of what you are getting before you buy:

Table of Contents:

Intro

Key Terms

• Chapter One – Basic Concepts and techniques

1. type of brushes
2. Applying paint without a brush
3. Selecting the right format for your picture
4. Choosing a sketching medium
5. Using Acrylic as a sketching medium
6. Working on white and colored grounds
7. Making realistic shadows
8. Negative Shapes
9. Perspective: the ground rules

• Chapter Two – Understanding Color
  1. Secondary Colors
  2. Tertiary Colors
  3. Complementary Colors
  4. Blending colors on the canvas
  5. Glazes and how they effect color
  6. Capturing soft, delicate pinks
  7. Demonstration: flowering artichokes by the pool

• Chapter Three- Rendering Still Life

1. Painting Still life for the first time
2. Painting three-dimensional objects
3. Painting realistic drapery
4. Painting glass
5. Painting lifelike flowers
6. Painting reflections in metal

• Chapter Four – Depicting Landscapes
  1. Uniting foreground, middle ground, and background
  2. Showing extreme distance
  3. Deciding where to add detail
  4. Painting realistic foliage
  5. Different type of trees
  6. Demo: Australian landscape
• Chapter Five – Creating atmosphere and texture

1. Depicting Strong Sunlight
2. Fluffy clouds with depth and dimension
3. Creating the impression of a windy day
4. Recreating the atmosphere of a misty day
5. What is a good exercise for learning to paint snow?
6. Demo: Snow Scene
7. Recreating textures of wood
8. Precisionist style
9. Incorporating different textures

• Chapter Six -Painting water
  1. Painting Ripples
  2. Painting reflections on water
  3. Demo: waves
• Chapter Seven – Portraying figures and animals
  1. Capturing the natural color of lips
  2. Expressive eyes
  3. Feet and toes
  4. The texture of short fur
  5. Capturing the sense of an animal’s movement
• Index