Watercolour Flower Painting Step-by-step

Wendy Tait studied at the Joseph Wright School of Art. She now teaches watercolour painting to adults, runs residential courses and often gives demonstrations to Art Societies. She produces designs for publication as greetings cards, and in 1998 was commissioned by the Jersey government to produce a series of autumn flower paintings for postage stamps. She has also written articles and produced illustrations for specialist art magazines.Richard Bolton is a professional watercolour artist who enjoys travelling and painting. He has written a number of successful art books from his visits around the world. He now lives and works in New Zealand with his wife.

• * Includes wild flowers, garden flowers and flower portraits * 12 demonstrations* More than 300 step-by-step photographs

June 12This is an interesting bind-up, as the publisher has chosen to attempt a comprehensive manual on flower painting by taking complementary sections from several previous books. On balance, I’d say that it works. I tend to be wary of this sort of approach because, all too often, it looks like a scissors and paste job, and shoe-horning together stuff that was never intended to be more than a chapter requires time and skill. I’m therefore pleased to say that this seems to have been overcome and that it’s not at all easy to see the joins. One of the reasons, I think, is that there’s been no attempt at democracy – all the authors are not equally represented so, if you think you’re getting four for the price of one, you’re not. This is a book that stands on its own and is all the better for that. Having more than one author can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you get the best approach for each section; on the other, you get a lack of continuity. Flicking quickly through, however, doesn’t reveal any great changes of style and I suspect that this again comes down to the choice of material and perhaps also to the production – maybe the colours were more markedly different in the original books (I can’t say for sure), but they have a consistency here.