Leisure Painter, March 2020
Search Press's new series, Paint Pad Poster Books offer a poster book, art pad and step-by-step painting book all in one... each of the five pull-out A3 posters can be framed and displayed. The stage by stage tutorial pages can also be pulled out so that you can access the information easily, painting directly onto the watercolour outline for quick and satisfying results... Flowers includes tutorials on tulips, irises, sunflowers, roses and poppies.
The Artist
Search Press have supersized their Paint Pad series. These new books take the form of an A3 pad with pull-out sheets of watercolour paper with the expected pre-printed outlines. It's also possible to pull out the instruction pages and pin them up so that you're not struggling with something unmanageable in the studio. Such details are evidence of the thought that;s gone into the presentation. Each book contains paper and instructions for five images, which you're encouraged to frame and display after completion - and they're so good you'd want to. No authors are credited and the images themselves look familiar - I'm pretty sure they're taken from other books, but the presentation is completely new. Consideration has also been given to the size - at this scale, imperfections in the reproduction would be very clear and they're fully up to standard on that score. It's an interesting development that has considerable potential.
Art Book Review
An A3 book is not easy to manage so, instead of the portfolio styling of the parent series, these are pads where youre clearly intended to pull out not just the sheets of watercolour paper with their pre-printed outlines, but the instruction pages as well. Tape the paper down onto a drawing board, pin the instructions on the wall and it all starts to make sense.
The quality is stunning. Each painting is shown in its complete state and, at this size, any shortcomings in the reproduction are going to be immediately obvious and a massive frustration. Full use has been made of the large page size to lay the instructions out clearly and illustrate them in detail. Everything is really clear and, if youre adopting my suggestion of pinning them on a wall, easy to see.
Theres an elegant simplicity to it thatll make serious art easily accessible to even the raw beginner.
