Charles Reid, «Portrait Painting in Watercolor»

This is one of the most sought after books on watercolor portraiture. Reid suggests the face and still gets a likeness. He leaves something for the viewer to fill in and be a part of the painting. It takes practice and intuition to bring out the aritists innate intuitive abilities expressed on paper. Reid shows step by step how he approaches his subject. He focuses on contrast and value and immediacy to give the painting life and spontaniety. A valued book to read over and over.

Review:

Not Charles' best book – but quite good none the less
…The book is brown, in colour and concept. Charles' book on Natural Painting is much more appealing. However this book is well written and illustrated although not colorfully. There is some interesting insight into portrait technique – but realistically, I doubt if Charles learned to paint this way himself … his talent is inborn and self-taught. His portraits are startling and unique in their ability to capture likenesses from a swirling mass of tone and/or color sometimes using only subtlist details of shade and highlight. The facial details that we plebians see (2 eyes, nose, mouth, chin, hair) have little to do with Charles' images – sometimes many key features are ill defined or undefined … however he always manages to capture the likeness. He sees in a different way – I think he sees primarily tones (shades of gray) more than anything – color seems to be secondary to him (this is apparent in his Natural Painting book too) – yet he also has a unique and insightful perspective on colors, especially skin tones. A good book.