Watercolor Painting With Passion!

Rating:
Summary: Exciting Watercolour !
Review: Alvaro's style is exhuberent and fun just like his personality. I painted with him on a painting trip through Europe - he is fantastic to watch, and unique in his style- the book really captures his painting and brings back great memories of his painting style. It's the next best thing to a lesson with him. (well maybe better - it's easier to remember when you get home). He is more colourful and perhaps emotive than your usual watercolourist. Buy it. I am a biased Aussie - who thinks we have some fantastic watercolourists. Also Check out David Taylor, Robert Wade... And if go to Europe with them. Painting in the streets with them is a wonderful unforgettable experience.

Rating:
Summary: Exciting Watercolour !
Review: Castagnet's style and draftsmanship are enormously attractive. He paints bold, bright free watercolors that start with excellent drawing. Most of the paintings in this well-illustrated book are of city scenes. I recommend the book for anyone interested in a loose and fresh approach to watercolor.
However, this is NOT a book to consider in order to learn techniques and methods. There are zillions of "how to" books about watercolor technique. Get this book to enjoy strong fresh well-drawn paintings.

Rating:
Summary: Great paintings
Review: Castagnet's style and draftsmanship are enormously attractive. He paints bold, bright free watercolors that start with excellent drawing. Most of the paintings in this well-illustrated book are of city scenes. I recommend the book for anyone interested in a loose and fresh approach to watercolor.
However, this is NOT a book to consider in order to learn techniques and methods. There are zillions of "how to" books about watercolor technique. Get this book to enjoy strong fresh well-drawn paintings.

Rating:
Summary: Passion Yes, Teaching No
Review: I bought this book because I loved the cover and anticipated some directional advice on how to paint this type of city scene. The book has wonderful photos of Castagnet's painting with lots of verbage about the feelings and emotions that he wanted to portray but clearly he did not want to share his techniques to arrive there. There are VERY few demonstrations and, unfortunately, they are lacking in true teaching commentary. It has been very hard to me to follow and try to reproduce anything from the demonstrations. He seems to leave out a lot of the instructions, colors and steps. I can feel his PASSION in each of the paintings included in the book and, therefore, can recommend this book as a resource for ideas not instruction. I believe that this book should have been produced as a table top book rather than an teaching book.

Rating:
Summary: More inspiration than perspiration
Review: This book has value in inspiring intermediate and advanced students of traditional painting to define their own approaches to the creative process. This is not a book for beginning watercolorists, but then there are many other books intended to serve that purpose. In 128 pages, there are only about 7 paintings for which the painting process is shown from initial drawing to completed painting. The rest of the many painting illustrations are accompanied by anecdotes about the circumstances surrounding the creation of each painting. There is some analysis of what the artist intended for each painting in terms of composition, tonal values, use of color, etc. Castagnet also provides a lot of general commentary about his approach to various aspects of traditional painting or--as some might call it--illustration. Castagnet is a very talented watercolorist, similar to many of his best Australian contemporaries, with some signature use of texture and saturated color that sometimes borders on expressionism. Most of Castagnet's paintings are of city and seaport scenes, so the variety of subjects is limited. His paintings of interiors may be his most distinctive; I wish there were more examples of them. It's a pity that the artist has limited his subject matter to such a great extent. The inclusion of more figure studies, and perhaps even some comparatively abstract paintings, might have resulted in a more interestingly varied book.