Landscapes

The best way to describe all the books in this series is a "Best of Colored Pencil" but combined with a short how-to essay showing how each featured artist approached the painting. The approach of the book was simple. A group of artists were each given one of three landscape photos and then asked to create a colored pencil painting using the photo as a reference. The variety of interpretations was inspiring. One entry particularly delighted me. One lady must have seen her landscape photo as a reminder of China or Japan. The resulting landscape she created from the photo took on a beautiful Oriental quality. Each artist listed the materials they used, the colors used and most had a few step-by-step thumbnail sized photos of the pictures in progress as well as the final painting in larger format. I most treasure it simply because the creative responses to something as simple as the same 3 photos lead to so many different results. Books like this are invaluable for helping to inspire creative ideas - especially if you're suffering from "blank page" syndrome. My one and only wish is that it had been longer...it's that good. All in all, a very worthwhile book to own.