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Rating: 
Summary: Anatomy is botany
Review: If you are interested in becoming a botanical illustrator this book will be a welcome addition to your library. The charming illustrations and discussion of botanical details will be most useful to you. If however you are interested in an all-around book dealing with various types of trees and ways to use them in your landscape artwork you will be disappointed. The book dates from 1915 and is in black and white, which in itself makes it less useful than one in color would be. Even so it could have been much more generally useful to the painter if it had concentrated on identification of various trees and their shapes, with textual descriptions of their color. Instead it begins with small pictures of paintings by the 'masters' which have included trees, and then proceeds to discussions of composition. Later chapters do indeed have illustrations of several trees, and details abound. These ensure that there can be no excuse for the reader to misrepresent the joining of twigs and so on, of various species. The last 40% or so of the book gives the most minute botanical details of a number of varieties of trees. There are useful illustrations and text in the book, and it is inexpensive enough to make me willing to keep it on my shelf, but there are books on drawing trees that are far more helpful to the painter.
Rating:
Summary: Anatomy is botany
Review: If you are interested in becoming a botanical illustrator this book will be a welcome addition to your library. The charming illustrations and discussion of botanical details will be most useful to you. If however you are interested in an all-around book dealing with various types of trees and ways to use them in your landscape artwork you will be disappointed. The book dates from 1915 and is in black and white, which in itself makes it less useful than one in color would be. Even so it could have been much more generally useful to the painter if it had concentrated on identification of various trees and their shapes, with textual descriptions of their color. Instead it begins with small pictures of paintings by the 'masters' which have included trees, and then proceeds to discussions of composition. Later chapters do indeed have illustrations of several trees, and details abound. These ensure that there can be no excuse for the reader to misrepresent the joining of twigs and so on, of various species. The last 40% or so of the book gives the most minute botanical details of a number of varieties of trees. There are useful illustrations and text in the book, and it is inexpensive enough to make me willing to keep it on my shelf, but there are books on drawing trees that are far more helpful to the painter.
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