Chinese Landscapes Made Easy

Chinese Landscapes Made Easy
-by Rebecca Yue

Publisher: Batsford Books (UK), 176 pages
ISBN 978-0-7134-9047-3

MY RATING: 5/5

beautifully illustrated comprehensive art course

Imagery of the tranquillity and poetry of nature has remained a compelling source of inspiration for artists throughout the millennia. In particular, Chinese landscape paintings, clearly depict nature as more than a mere facsimile of surroundings. Rather, they are abstract expressions of the heart and mind of the artist — they are images that tell stories, exemplifying the depth and beauty of their surrounding culture.

In Chinese Landscapes Made Easy, author and artist Rebecca Yue’s comprehensive and methodical instruction, not only brings a beautifully painted Chinese landscape easily within reach of a novice artist, but also affords a glimpse into the old world techniques and inspiration behind the art.

Along with clear instructions, requisite materials and equipment are outlined and listed, which include: six basic, yet essential, Chinese brushes; various types and weight of paper to facilitate differing painting methods; ink; and other indispensable accessories. These items coupled with a little time, effort and imagination will help the artist master the basics of creating a beautiful finished painting.

The artist is artfully guided through the steps by systematic instructions, and diagrams, in how to manoeuvre the brushes, angling the brush on the painting surface, along with crucial techniques such as the “press and lift” and “dots and long dots” methods, dry and wet loading, two-color loading, and various brush strokes. The effects achieved by each technique are clearly demonstrated with illustrations and descriptive text.

In the beautifully illustrated “Moods & Seasons” and “Landscape Features” chapters, Yue utilizes her own paintings as a guide to clearly demonstrate how to piece together the elements learned in previous chapters, to produce an inspiring and stunning final painting.

In short, Chinese Landscapes Made Easy encapsulates an entire comprehensive art course, which aids the budding artist through every step of creating beautiful Chinese landscapes, and even facilitates the needs of more intermediate/advanced-level artist, seeking to improve skills in achieving a more true-to-form Chinese technique — an art form, in its own right.

05/31/2007
—Reviewed for Batsford Books

The Decorated Journal

The Decorated Journal: Creating Beautifully Expressive Journal Pages
-by Gwen Diehn

Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Lark Books; New Ed edition (August 28, 2006)
ISBN-10: 1579909566 / ISBN-13: 978-1579909567

MY RATING: 5/5

comprehensive and enjoyable workshop in a book

The Decorated Journal attests that Gwen Diehn, not only competent at binding and embellishing beautiful books, also finds her niche in writing them. From the first page onward, it is evident that Diehn, who teaches journal-creation itself as an art form, takes great pride in sharing the details of her creative knowledge and experience, as much as she enjoys putting them to use.

In this inspiring companion to her previous book, The Decorated Page, Diehn effortlessly initiates and encourages the flow of creative juices with regards visual journaling (complementing descriptive text with visual art), beautifying and personalizing pages/covers, and basic book-binding as a form of artistic expression.

Brimming with instructional gems, each page — amply and colourfully illustrated with expressive images and beautiful examples of creative journal pages — builds gradually on the preceding pages, allowing the reader to progressively observe how the core pieces of the project fit together and visualize the finished product.

The Decorated Journal includes various uses of materials such as watercolour, pastels, coloured pencils, crayons, liquid acrylics, ink, and a vast array of techniques to get the most out of your materials. Also helpful are Diehn’s detailed and practical comparisons of various types/weight of paper, varieties of adhesives, and brushes. Other design suggestions include the use of cut-outs, copier transfers, gouache, collage, colour washes, stamping, etc., to enhance the beauty and interest of your journal. The author touches upon dry/wet processes, use of transparencies and drop shadows to add an interesting dimension to the journal’s pages.

One of the book’s highlights is the comprehensive section on creating an actual journal from scratch, using basic easy-to-find materials. Even the most hesitant of bookbinders will appreciate the chapter entitled “The Reluctant Bookbinder” which walks you through the fundamentals: an easy-to-complete 3-minute pamphlet, the 6-minute double pamphlet, the 30-minute multiple pamphlet journal, and ultimately, the beautiful yet functional 2-hour leather-bound journal. Diehn’s tips are also helpful in customizing an unimaginative store-bought blank book that could use a personal touch. Instructions also include altering book covers or using an old book cover to create a new blank book.

Diehn generously offers her readers a comprehensive workshop in a book, which will be sure to delight journal enthusiasts. Whether you are a novice or “journal veteran”, an occasional journal reader/writer or an avid daily archivist, The Decorated Journal will prove to be a valuable creative resource, overflowing with inspiration and imaginative ideas.

05/31/2007
— Reviewed for Sterling Publishing Co., NY

An Enchantment of Birds

An Enchantment of Birds: Memories from a Birder's Life
-by Richard Cannings

ISBN-10: 1553652355
ISBN-13: 978-1553652359

A flock of praise for An Enchantment of Birds

Biologist, naturalist, and bird enthusiast Richard Cannings’ celebrated oeuvre isn’t just for the birds. Whether you are a devout birdwatcher with binoculars and field book in hand, or someone who just enjoys learning more about the winged beauties that frequent the feeder outside your window, Cannings’ beautifully written compilation of memorable sightings and stories of birds native to North America will delight and divert bird aficionados of any degree.

Harmoniously and skilfully, Cannings complements a delightful menagerie of personal encounters with his fine-feathered friends, with specifications of their niches, habitats spanning the Atlantic to Pacific coasts, identifying characteristics, patterns of behaviour, remarkable details of anatomy, and function in the ecosystem.

From the Preface, where he recounts the beginnings of his fascination (“Once the spell has been cast, you forever experience the world differently, eyeing forests as if you were a woodpecker looking for nesting snags…”), to his childhood memories of early morning meadowlark songs drifting through his window, along with family hikes through woodlands and prairies, Cannings speaks candidly and affectionately about his lifetime love of birds and nature in general. “Whatever the origins of this interest, it is indeed an enchantment”, Cannings writes.

These charming anecdotes and reminisces, while comprehensive, are a refreshing contrast to a birder’s guidebook detailing every statistic in deliberate textbook fashion. Its pages offer an up-close perspective and glimpse into the lives of these enchanting creatures. In addition, beautifully rendered sketches from illustrator Donald Gunn serve as a striking and almost-poetic complement to Cannings’ expressive meditations on these wonders of wildlife.

Whether it is a rare sighting of the remarkably plumed white-headed woodpecker, the majestic bald eagle, and the flammulated owl (“one of those creatures that you do not see unless you go looking for them”), or the frequently sighted crow, bluebird and chickadee, Cannings’ lyrical scrutiny brings these marvels of creation from the page in startling familiarity and clarity. Other birds captured between the pages of Enchantment, include the pygmy nuthatch, calliope hummingbird, evening grosbeak, bohemian waxwing, white-tailed ptarmigan, tufted puffin, and northern gannet, to mention just a few.

The author expresses his hope that “their stories will touch you as well and perhaps begin to cast a spell that will last a lifetime.” Without a doubt, Richard Cannings’ informative, yet delicately tender, labour-of-love, An Enchantment of Birds, will be sure to do just that — not unlike the subjects of his very own musings.

05/30/2007
—Reviewed for Douglas & McIntyre Publishing

The Decorated Page

The Decorated Page: Journals, Scrapbooks & Albums Made Simply Beautiful
-by Gwen Diehn

Paperback, 128 pages
Publisher: Lark Books; 1st Pbk edition (August 28, 2003)
ISBN-10: 1579905129 / ISBN-13: 978-1579905125

MY RATING: 4.5/5

In The Decorated Page — an inspiring and amply illustrated forerunner to her most recent work, The Decorated Journal — author and artist Gwen Diehn effortlessly motivates the flowing of creative juices with regards visual journaling (complementing descriptive text with visual art), beautifying and personalizing journals, scrapbooks, and albums as a form of artistic expression.

Diehn’s The Decorated Page, attests that she is not only adroit at binding and embellishing beautiful books, also finds her niche in writing them. From the first page onward, it is evident that the author, who teaches journal-creation itself as an art form, takes great pride in sharing the details of her creative knowledge and experience, as much as she enjoys putting them to use.

Each cleverly laid-out colourful pages include easy-to-grasp instructions and suggestions, which build gradually on the preceding pages, allowing the reader to progressively observe how the core pieces of the project fit together and visualize the finished product. It is literally brimming with beautiful samples of uniquely decorated journals and albums utilizing different materials, equipment, mediums and techniques, that will be sure to inspire even the most hesitant of artists and journal keepers.

The Decorated Page incorporates the use of various contemporary materials such as watercolour, pastels, coloured pencils, crayons, liquid acrylics, ink, and more, along with a vast array of techniques to get the most out of your materials. Also helpful are Diehn’s detailed and practical comparisons of various types/weight of paper, varieties of adhesives, and brushes. Other design suggestions include the use of cut-outs, copier transfers, gouache, collage, colour washes, stamping, etc., to enhance the beauty and interest of your journal. The author touches upon dry/wet processes, use of transparencies and drop shadows to add an interesting dimension to the journal’s pages.

As was the case in The Decorated Journal, Diehn generously offers her readers an additional comprehensive workshop-in-a-book with The Decorated Page — a great companion to its predecessor, which will be sure to delight journal enthusiasts. Whether you are a novice or “journal veteran”, an occasional journal reader/writer or an avid daily archivist, this book will prove to be a treasure trove of inspiration and imaginative ideas.

06/01/2007
— Reviewed for Sterling Publishing Co. NY

The Jade Peony

The Jade Peony
— by Wayson Choy

288 pages (2007)
Other Press, paperback
ISBN 0312155565

MY RATING: 4 / 5 stars

a poignant examination of Chinese immigrants’ struggle in Canada

Wayson Choy's beautifully written debut novel, The Jade Peony, is a poignant examination of the Chinese immigrant experience in Vancouver’s Chinatown before and during the Second World War, and its consequence on collective ideals, as well as the immigrants’ personal identities. It is a representation of a proud, dignified people struggling to regain autonomy from the constraints of history, intolerance, destitution, and cultural heritage.

True to memoir-like fashion, The Jade Peony consists of three individual manuscripts, written from different perspectives. Three siblings in the same household of Chinese immigrants, eking out a meager living in Vancouver’s Chinatown, combine their accounts in one volume, to compile a narrative of different acculturation effects within the family and the Chinese community itself. These three very different life experiences and vantage points, bestow an accurate sampling of a new generation desperate to adjust and assimilate the new world culture, often at the sacrifice of the “old ways”…much to their elders’ dismay.

Little sister Jook-Liang, who longs to be a performer like Shirley Temple, befriends family friend Wong Bak, a deformed elderly man from the old country. As the two of them form an unlikely friendship, Jook-Liang ambitiously dreams of escaping the unyielding old ways, while grappling with the old Chinese convention of elevating the life of a boy above that of a girl.

Second brother Jung-Sum, taken from a neglectful family in China, is sent to live with his new adoptive family in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Besieged by childhood trauma of what he had to endure at the hands of his biological parents, he ultimately feels a sense of belonging amongst his new family, and finds his niche in boxing.

Third Brother Sekky, often plagued with illness (and as a result, coddled by Poh-Poh), never quite comes to terms with the plethora of complex Chinese dialects he is forced to study. Overwhelmed, he often retreats into himself, inducing visions of Poh-Poh after she is gone, and filling the void with an obsession for war games. When a forbidden relationship flourishes between Sekky’s Chinese babysitter and a Japanese boy, the lines between friend and foe are blurred by fear of frightful events happening a world away, with devastating consequences.

At the heart of each account is Poh-Poh (respectfully known as the “Old One”, or Grandmother). the mainstay and matriarch of the family, who passes down vivid reminiscences of her life experiences to the children. Not unlike the jade peony, which she bestows to them as an inheritance, Poh-Poh also confers them a more valuable inheritance — their cultural heritage as a people, and the necessity and importance of holding on to a measure of “old way” attitude.

Though discrimination and poverty predominated the early immigrants’ experience, Choy tempers his story with a caustic wit and a gritty humor that brings a certain hope to the often-heartrending chronicle. Given its candor and lucid voice on an important topic, it is no surprise that The Jade Peony has gained many accolades and awards, and has won its way to many readers’ hearts.

Buy The Jade Peony at Amazon.com.

05/07/2007
- reviewed for Curled Up With A Good Book

Secrets to Drawing Heads

Secrets to Drawing Heads
-by Allan Kraayvanger

Paperback: 112 pages
Sterling (February 2007)
ISBN-10: 1402747438 / ISBN-13: 978-1402747434

MY RATING: 4 / 5 stars

Exceptional guide for the novice

Capturing the quintessence of the human head and face, as well as character of the individual, is the “holy grail” of all techniques, to most artists; also the most complicated and challenging to achieve. This is mainly due to the fact that most struggle with the tendency towards drawing things symbolically, rather than what is actually seen. Allan Kraayvanger’s Secrets to Drawing Heads is a classic of simplicity, yet exceptionally focused, when it comes to helpful direction in this exceptional art, especially for the absolute novice attempting to develop their skills in portrait drawing.

An easy-to-read condensed art tutorial, Secrets to Drawing Head’s 112 pages are copiously illustrated with over 230 drawings, including step-by-step instructions and text outlining the core techniques that will help the budding artist reason on why such methods are taken. The reader is shown the building blocks of an accurate portrait and how to master the techniques in applying the study of basic components such as skin values, geometric shapes, shadows and lighting, perspective, and planes, to develop visual awareness. Advice offered on “individualizing” a face is also exceedingly helpful in capturing the subjects ‘character’ and personal aura in a portrait.

Extremely helpful in guiding and nudging the burgeoning artist beyond the lifeless one-dimensional line drawing, the complexities of the human face and head are abridged to their simplest structures to accommodate easy comprehension. It should be said that, while accurate and recognizable, the final result is akin to a loose sketch, rather than a detailed and refined portrait. Therefore, its richly visual instruction and references are geared more towards the beginner or intermediate, as opposed to the seasoned artist who is looking for a greater echelon of detail in a finished drawing.

Also included are discussions capturing realistic anatomy by understanding bone and muscle structure, advice on capturing tipped profiles and angled views accurately, as well as the use of symbolism. A comprehensive index in the back of the book also aids in rapid look-up of particular topics of interest.

Kraayvanger’s own drawing illustrations, coupled with his pointed text and guidance in Secrets to Drawing Heads, strike a perfect equilibrium, as he demonstrates the quick, rewarding way to master the fundamentals of a favorite genre of expression. The beginner artist will appreciate how the author reduces complexities with fun and easy-to-follow instructions. This book is highly recommended to the artist endeavoring to gain confidence in drawing an accurate likeness.

Buy Secrets to Drawing Heads at Amazon.com

05/04/2007
-reviewed for Sterling Publishing, NY