Painting School

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Painting School is a new tutorial and technique guide aimed at younger artists and their adults. Released 4th June 2019 by Quarto on their Walter Foster Jr. imprint, it's an impressive 240 pages and available in flexibound format.

Roughly 10% of the page content is taken up with an accessible, well written introduction covering materials, color theory, tools, and other how-to's. As an aside, the text is well illustrated and so very appealing and upbeat. The small color wheels, for example, are liberally illustrated with cute smiling faces. I enjoyed just paging through this vibrantly colorful book. There's no dry and dull explanatory text here.

The introduction is followed by step by step tutorial pages starting with very simple fingerprint painting where a finger/thumbprint is enhanced with drawn in details after the paint is dry. There are so many cute ideas, from animals to plants and even a submarine. All of them can be successfully completed by even beginning artists (yes, even me!). The end of the chapter has a nice full page illustration in color of a landscape done by fingerprint painting and is a good example of composition and placement.

The next chapters use simple geometric shapes built up into recognizable subjects. There are chapters for animals, people, fantasy subjects, nature, edible things, vehicles, space, and dinosaurs. There are enough subjects to keep kids of all ages busy and engaged for a long while.

Beautifully done.

This would make a superlative addition to the classroom library. It would also be a great selection for camp/kid art time at a public library as well as a go-to book for summer vacation fun at home.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.