Jim Patrick
A Fixture
I recently took the plung and bought this book from Squadron.
First of all, let's go ahead and clear the air. The book does cost $35. The book is nice (very nice I think) but $35 nice? I'll let you decide. More to follow later.
First impression of this book is very nice. If you own any other of the Andrea Press books, you'll see what I mean right away. No longer do we have the flimsy cover. Gone are the days of watching your pages fall out over a period of use. It's also a good 1/2" to 3/4" taller. It has roughly 61 pages with the pictures being well done and pleasing to the eye. The book is broken down into several chapters. The first few being devoted to a horses anatomy (which I needed bad
) and the horse through the years to include military service. All of these first few chapters are thanfully brief as I didn't buy this to get a nice study in horse anatomy and horse history!
Andrea then gets down to the "meat and patatoes". That is to say, what I bought the book for in the first place. You are given several chapters on painting horses (different breeds) with different materials. All the way from oil paint to acrylic. The latter further goes on to be broken down to different manufactures of paint from Andrea, Vallejo, Tamiya and Gunze Sanyo with a few others tossed in their for good measure. The subjects are painted with brush and airbrush alike.
The last 3 chapters cover painting saddles, converting horses and a study in horse movement. The saddles isn't really neccessary in my opinion but it is nice to have just the same. Converting is really nice as it is all about turning the neck. A minor change easy to make to a horse which I do not do . Soon I will though. The study in horse movement is nice but personally I would have prefered larger picstures. I understand why Andrea didn't though. There are 36 pictures on two pages. If they were any larger, it'd be a much larger book too. The movement covers a horses walk, trot and running. All "according to Muybridge". Not sure what that means but I'm hoping some of you can explain it for me.
This is a pretty good book in my opinion. What makes it good you ask? I learned something by reading it and the book will help me with the painting of my horses in the future. It's pretty much aimed at the biginner to the intermediate painter. Yes there are a lot of books out there that cover horses in more detail but I don't own them. All of which brings me back to the cost. While some may say "I'll never spend that much on a book like that", isn't it up to the buyer? I had some serious reservations about purchasing it but I did and I'm glad I did. If you like to paint horses with your figures, consider buying this book. Just maybe it'll help you in some way that it helped me.
You can see it here on Squadron's site.
Also, you can see a nice PDF file on Andrea's site by clicking here.
Enjoy,
Jim Patrick
First of all, let's go ahead and clear the air. The book does cost $35. The book is nice (very nice I think) but $35 nice? I'll let you decide. More to follow later.
First impression of this book is very nice. If you own any other of the Andrea Press books, you'll see what I mean right away. No longer do we have the flimsy cover. Gone are the days of watching your pages fall out over a period of use. It's also a good 1/2" to 3/4" taller. It has roughly 61 pages with the pictures being well done and pleasing to the eye. The book is broken down into several chapters. The first few being devoted to a horses anatomy (which I needed bad
) and the horse through the years to include military service. All of these first few chapters are thanfully brief as I didn't buy this to get a nice study in horse anatomy and horse history!Andrea then gets down to the "meat and patatoes". That is to say, what I bought the book for in the first place. You are given several chapters on painting horses (different breeds) with different materials. All the way from oil paint to acrylic. The latter further goes on to be broken down to different manufactures of paint from Andrea, Vallejo, Tamiya and Gunze Sanyo with a few others tossed in their for good measure. The subjects are painted with brush and airbrush alike.
The last 3 chapters cover painting saddles, converting horses and a study in horse movement. The saddles isn't really neccessary in my opinion but it is nice to have just the same. Converting is really nice as it is all about turning the neck. A minor change easy to make to a horse which I do not do
. Soon I will though. The study in horse movement is nice but personally I would have prefered larger picstures. I understand why Andrea didn't though. There are 36 pictures on two pages. If they were any larger, it'd be a much larger book too. The movement covers a horses walk, trot and running. All "according to Muybridge". Not sure what that means but I'm hoping some of you can explain it for me.This is a pretty good book in my opinion. What makes it good you ask? I learned something by reading it and the book will help me with the painting of my horses in the future. It's pretty much aimed at the biginner to the intermediate painter. Yes there are a lot of books out there that cover horses in more detail but I don't own them. All of which brings me back to the cost. While some may say "I'll never spend that much on a book like that", isn't it up to the buyer? I had some serious reservations about purchasing it but I did and I'm glad I did. If you like to paint horses with your figures, consider buying this book. Just maybe it'll help you in some way that it helped me.
You can see it here on Squadron's site.
Also, you can see a nice PDF file on Andrea's site by clicking here.
Enjoy,
Jim Patrick
