I bought this book after reading a short article by Alvaro Castagnet in an art magazine. It sounded like the book would help me take my watercolour painting to a new level.
And if they had asked the painter to write an article in this respected magazine, surely the book had to be good.
Well, I am an innocent maybe. But nowhere did it say this article was an advertorial.
The bottom line? Don't buy this book, unless you just want to look at beautiful photographs of watercolours. It will not do what it says on the tin.
Actually, it will teach you nothing. I thought that the step-by-step section would reveal some of the secrets of Castagnet's beautiful paintings. But no, nothing, rien, nada.
Just bullshit about how important colour, shapes, value and edges are in watercolour paintings. As if we didn't know already! But nothing in HOW to do it.
Nowhere in this book will you find how he achieves this hazy luminous effect - he vaguely talks about Chinese White, a spritz of water and some towel, but nothing that made any sense when I tried to put it into practise.
And his paintings are beautiful, there is no denying it. But the book cost me over €45 with shipping and I learned nothing that I can use. And the other annoying thing is that he uses the book to advertise his Daniel Smith paints, his paint brushes and his watercolour sketchbooks. And don't get me going on the passion and the emotions!
And to top it all - it wasn't available on Amazon, so I can't write my review there!
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