Kew: The Watercolour A to Z of Trees and Foliage: An Illustrated Directory of Techniques for Painting 24 Trees

The Watercolour A to Z of Trees and Foliage by Adelene Fletcher is a beautiful book, perfect for both beginner and the more advanced watercolourist. It is well set out with clear illustrations and full instructions, helpfully including colour swatches for the paints used for each tree. After some initial instructional pages, mainly aimed at newcomers to watercolour, there is helpful technique information, ideas useful to all painters. The subsequent chapters each focus on one tree, twenty four in all, ranging from favourites, Common Oak and Willow, to the more exotic, Windmill Palm and Ginko/Maidenhair. If you want to paint the glorious autumn colours of Acers or the Olive Trees from your Mediterranean holiday, this is the book for you! A third short section touches on use of trees in varied landscape settings. It contains more technique tips for further inspiration. I am sure this book is going to be a great help to me. The rear cover tells me that its purchase supports the vital work of Kew Botanical Gardens in London which must have plenty more to inspire the author should she wish to produce a second, or similar, volume. This, I feel, would be a welcome future addition to a painter's bookshelf. -- Shirley Farrant Anstey * Amazon Customer Review * The infinite shapes and colours in trees are a source of numerous design elements in silk painting. This book focuses on both common and the more unusual, exotic varieties of trees, from Acer to one I have never heard of, Zelkova. Useful for drawing our attention away from the normal to branching out into more interesting shapes. The book supports the vital work at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. The characteristic shapes of each tree, in full foliage, winter outlines and the smaller details are dully illustrated.  The big plus are colour palettes for painting each tree and techniques for painting leaves. I found the detailed perspective of branches particularly informative.  The bark on some trees in so fascinating, and often difficult to mimic, there are lots of ideas on how to approach this. I realised it could be useful to mix silk paint with dyes to achieve a certain effect. This book draws you in, the more you read the more you want to know. Occasionally, I wish I could enter the draw, this is one such occasion but not to be. However, I think it could well be worth the purchase. -- Margaret Dunning * Guild of Silk Painters *