Photographs make an excellent record of a scene that you can take away and work up into a painting back in the comfort of your studio. A good photographic collection can also provide you with a wealth of subjects when it's not possible to go out painting on location.

This thorough guide is full of ideas, inspiration, hints and tips as well as lots of examples - landscapes, townscapes, people, buildings, water, trees - the list is almost endless.

What Geoff concentrates on most is the idea of not simply copying what the camera recorded. The photographs can show you the scene as it was and tell you how the colours look and where the light fell, but it might not give you the perfect composition. That's where the artist's eye comes in and that's what Geoff is superb at explaining.

As he says himself, this isn't a book about photography and many of the photographs illustrated are not the best quality, and you'll have gathered by now that that's exactly the point.

The book contains no fewer than twenty-five demonstrations. In each of them, Geoff isn't concerned with the process of painting so much as the way a scene can be interpreted - what to put in, what to leave out, where to crop the view. This is a masterclass that everyone will be able to follow.


Search Press . Paperback . 128 pages . Colour throughout.

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